Thiruvananthapuram, May 1 : Even though counting of votes for the 140-member Kerala Assembly will begin at sharp 8 a.m on Sunday, the final results could well be delayed till early evening. The reason for this is the huge number of postal ballots and compared to the 2016 assembly polls, there are over 4.54 lakh postal votes this time. Incidentally this is 3.5 lakhs more than the 2016 polls. This time for the first time and on account of Covid, people over 80 years of age were given the opportunity to use the postal ballot facility and as a result close to 2.97 lakhs used this method to exercise their franchise and the remaining postal votes are those of election officials. Moreover, time is still there for postal votes to be returned and can happen till 7 a.m Sunday morning. Incidentally in the last year's Bihar assembly elections, even though there were 2.5 lakh postal votes, the results got delayed and came in the evening, so Kerala with almost double that number, the suspense could well be delayed. /IANS