67% voting in Tripura LS polls

Agartala, April 23 (IANS) Over 67 per cent votes were registered till 3 p.m. on Tuesday in the deferred polling for the Tripura East parliamentary constituency, election officials said.

The officials said that in around 100 polling stations, voting was temporarily halted due to the malfunctioning of either the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) or the Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.

Voting began amidst heavy security at 7 a.m. and will end at 5 p.m. A total of 1,257,944 people, including 620,291 women, are eligible to exercise their franchise and decide the fate of 10 candidates, including two women.

A total of 1,645 polling stations, including 31 being managed by only women polling officials and security personnel, have been set up.

Police spokesman Subrata Chakraborty said that no untoward incident was reported from anywhere in the mountainous tribal reserve constituency spread across six districts.

The main contest is expected between the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) sitting MP Jitendra Choudhury, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Rebati Tripura and Maharaj Kumari Pragya Deb Barman of the Congress.

A record number of around 10,000 Central Para-Military Forces, Tripura State Rifles troopers and state police personnel have been deployed in the constituency, bordering Bangladesh, Assam and Mizoram.

Citing a "non-conducive security situation", the poll panel last week had deferred voting for the seat from April 18 to April 23.

Tripura has two Lok Sabha constituencies. Polling in the Tripura West seat was held on April 11.