Over 80% voting in incident-free Tripura LS poll
Agartala, April 23 (IANS) Over 80 per cent of the total 12.5 lakh voters on Tuesday cast their ballots in the deferred polling for the Tripura East parliamentary constituency, election officials said.
"After the final reports from all the polling stations received, the polling percentage might touch 80 per cent. In 2014, the voting percentage in the Tripura East parliamentary seat was around 85 per cent," an Election official said.
The officials said that in around 100 polling stations, voting was temporarily halted due to the snags of either the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) or the Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
Police spokesman Subrata Chakraborty said that no untoward incident was reported from anywhere in the mountainous tribal reserve constituency spread across six districts.
Another senior police official said that few people were arrested in Amarpur areas in southern Tripura for intimidating voters and plying bikes violating the election rules.
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 paramilitary force, 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.
Polling in the state's other seat (Tripura West) was held on April 11.