79 per cent polling in Badharghat Assembly bypoll

Around 79 per cent of the electorate exercised their franchise in the by-election to the Badharghat Assembly seat here on Monday, officials said.

There was no report of any violence from anywhere in the constituency during the polling, a police officer said.

"Polling, which began at 7 am passed off peacefully. Altogether 79.29 per cent of the 57,908 voters exercised their franchise," Returning Officer, Tarun Debbarma told reporters here.

Assistant Inspector General of Police (Law and Order), Subrata Chakraborty said the polling was incident-free.

Senior leader of opposition Congress, Subal Bhowmick in a press conference at Congress Bhavan here said, "We are happy with the performance of ECI. Voting was peaceful.

CPI(M) West Tripura District secretary, Pabitra Kar alleged that polling agents of the party were forced to leave 21 booths by the goons of ruling BJP and two of them were beaten up.

"Twenty one polling agents were driven away by the goons of BJP, two of them were beaten up. We made written complaint to the ECI. Police swung into action and the polling agents returned to their works. However, polling was peaceful overall", Kar told reporters.

BJP spokesperson Ashoke Sinha termed the CPI(M) allegations as "baseless".

"People voted in a festive mood. It was completely peaceful. ECI has done a good job", Sinha said.

The by-election to the Badharghat constituency was necessitated due to the death of ruling BJP MLA Dilip Sarkar in April this year.

The BJP has fielded Mimi Majumder for the seat while Bulti Biswas is the CPI (M) candidate. Ratan Das is the Congress candidate.