The Independent Election Commission on Thursday confirmed that at least 495 memory cards and 186 biometric devices have gone missing.

However, the Election Commission said that efforts are underway to recover these devices.

The IEC said that these missing devices and memory cards will not have any impact on the election results.

This comes a day after the commission announced the complete transfer of voters’ information from biometric devices to the commission’s data center.

The IEC has also started the investigation of 2,300 devices that were flagged and separated out for various reasons.

“Up until now we’ve been satisfied, and we hope that the delay that comes because of the process is reduced and that the commission can do what needs to be done,” said Daoud Sultanzoy, a member of State Building campaign.

“There are some ballot boxes that contain some devices that were damaged partially or were out of memory cards or had technical problems,” said Mohammad Younus Nawandesh, a member of the Stability and Convergence Team.

“Until now 186 biometric devices and 172 printers are missing, plus 495 chips of biometric devices are also missing. I think this will not be a major challenge on the way to getting election results,” said Rahima Zarifi, an IEC commissioner.

Initially, the IEC was supposed to announce the preliminary results of the election on October 19. But the Election Commission has since said that the process of validating the votes could take longer.