Over 23 lakh voters to vote in February 14 polls in Tripura

Over 23 lakh voters, nearly half of whom are women will exercise their franchise in the February 14 elections to the 60-member assembly in Tripura, official sources said on Sunday.

Publishing the final voters’ list, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Asutosh Jindal said of the 23,52,505 voters, 11,64,656 were women.

He said as per norms set by the Election Commission despite publication of the final electoral roll, any eligible voter could have his name enlisted provided he filed application within January 17 with papers and records as thereafter, it will not be possible.

There were some variations from the draft voters’ list and data shows that altogether 75,090 new voters have been enrolled as part of the final roll while 46,259 fake, dead and Bangladeshi voters had been dropped from the list of draft voters, Jindal said.

He added that the net addition to the final roll from the draft stage was 3.30 per cent.

Tripura has been covered with 100 per cent EPIC which will facilitate easy vote taking and there will be altogether 3,018 polling stations across the state, he said adding that if necessary ‘auxiliary voting centres’ would be added to the main ones.

The Commission is also trying to introduce exclusively woman run polling stations in Agartala town.

The CEO also held an all party meeting and distributed the final electoral rolls to representatives of CPI(M), CPI, BJP, Congress, RSP, Forward Bloc and other parties.

Regarding complaints filed by the opposition Congress leaders in Delhi against some election officials, Jindal said that no communication from the Election Commission has come so far. “Once it reaches us we will have the matter investigated for action,” he said.

Filing of nomination for the February 14 elections would begin from January 21 and would be concluded on January 28. The scrutiny of nomination papers would be held on January 29 and the last day of withdrawal of nomination is January 31.

In the last assembly election, the total number of electorate was 20.38 lakh and polling percentage was 91.31 per cent.