TNI Bureau: The counting of votes for the Jharsuguda Assembly by-elections began at 8 am on Saturday amid tight security arrangements.

Though there were nine candidates in the fray, the contest was restricted to three nominees – Deepali Das of the ruling BJD, Tankadhar Tripathy of BJP and Tarun Pandey of the Congress.

Counting will be conducted on 14 tables. Early Trends show BJD is leading over BJP.

At the end of the first round, the BJD got 5,944 votes while the BJP got 3,238 votes and the Congress got only 123 votes.