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According to election official sources, the voter turnout recorded till 1 p.m. was 45.9 per cent.
About 45.9 per cent of Tripura’s electorate had cast their vote till 1 pm in the state Assembly elections which began at 7am today, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Tapas Roy said. Elections are being held in 59 out of the state’s 60 Assembly constituencies. The election in Charilam constituency was postponed following the death seven days ago of CPI(M) candidate Ramendra Narayan Debbarma.
No incidents of violence had been reported from anywhere in the state, officials said.
The voting process, however, got delayed in some booths of West Tripura, Khowai, Unakoti districts as election workers could not connect the EVMs or electronic voting machines, he said.
“Engineers rushed to the booths and put everything in order,” he added.
BJP leader Sudip Roy Burman and ruling CPI(M) leader Krishna Majumder, both candidates from the Agartala constituency, had earlier in the day claimed that voting in a few polling stations in the state capital were held up for more than 90 minutes because of EVM glitches.
Roy refuted the claims and said all voting machines were working.
State Director General of Police Akhil Kumar Shukla said security measures had been put in place across Tripura for the Assembly polls.
The BSF has been asked to keep a close vigil on the 856-km-long India-Bangladesh border in Tripura and 300 companies of central armed forces along with state armed personnel and police have been deployed across the state to ensure free and fair polls, he added.
Tripura Chief Electoral Officer Sriram Taranikanti said the Election Commission has appointed police observers, general observers and expenditure observers to oversee the entire poll process.
More than 25 lakh voters will vote on February 18, 2018, in an election that has seen the BJP, an ‘also-ran’ till now in the north-eastern state, make a determined bid to demolish the red bastion of 25 years, with stalwarts like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah leading the charge.
In hilly and tribal areas, women huddled in large numbers outside poll booths in their colourful traditional attires. Small-time shop keepers were seen doing brisk business selling tea and snacks to the voters. Voting will end at 4 pm in all the 3,214 polling stations in the state, election office sources said.
Altogether 307 candidates are in the fray with the CPI(M), the major partner of the ruling Left Front, contesting 56 seats and its constituents -- RSP, Forward Bloc and CPI -- one seat each.
The BJP, which forged a pre-poll alliance with tribal outfit Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), has fielded 51 candidates. The IPFT, an anti-Left party, will contest the remaining nine.
The Congress is going it alone in Tripura this time and is contesting 59 seats. The party has not fielded any candidate from Kakrabon constituency in Gomati district.
Altogether, there are 25,73,413 registered voters, of whom 13,05,375 are male and 12,68,027 female. The number of voters under the third gender category in the state is 11 and that of the new voters is 47,803. Twenty seats are reserved for the scheduled tribes.
State Director General of Police Akhil Kumar Shukla said security measures are in place across Tripura to ensure free and fair polls.
He said 300 companies of central armed forces have been deployed along with state armed personnel and police, while BSF is keeping keep a close vigil along the 856-km-long India-Bangladesh border in Tripura, he added.
Tripura Chief Electoral Officer Sriram Taranikanti said the Election Commission has appointed police observers, general observers and expenditure observers to ensure hassle-free polls.
The director general of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), R K Pachnanda, has been appointed as a special observer to coordinate with the security forces deployed in the state.
Counting of votes would be taken up on March 3 and the voting for Charilam constituency will be conducted on March 12, sources in the election office said.
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