Sami Awami

The technical issues have delayed voting from starting.

The polls were supposed to open, or at least the voting should have started at 7 a.m.

But until 10, when we left several polling stations that we visited, voting had not started yet.

So I asked election officials at the centres what was the problem, and they told me they were failing or they couldn't configure the gadgets to connect the stations with the central system or the central portal.

We've seen a lot of political party supporters in big rallies, like massive rallies.

Hundreds of people have been attending.

But there has always been a question about whether these attenders in campaign rallies would translate into actually people going to vote.

There are several people that I've spoken to here and then asked them whether they were planning to vote.

Quite a few of them expressed disinterest, really, not going to vote.

And they said,

the winner of the election, especially the presidential candidate, is almost known already.

So they felt like there was no point for them to go out to vote.

But this morning when I visited these polling stations, some of them had long queues, maybe over 100 people.

But the first one, especially the polling station where the opposition politician, the opposition presidential candidate, the main opposition president candidate was going to vote, there were less than 100 people.

And it's quite a big district.

You'd expect there would be many people there, but it was different.

Well, that question really depends on who you ask, right?

If you ask the Electoral Commission, they've been assuring voters that they would manage these elections with utmost professionalism.

They would abide with the law and making sure that

Whoever wins will be announced.