Over 80% votes cast in Tripura

CEO said the polls were incident free and barring a few complaints, EVMs functioned well

Over 80 per cent voters exercised their franchise today for one of the two Lok Sabha seats -- Tripura West constituency in the Left Front ruled state as polling ended peacefully.

Election department sources said that the percentage might increase after final computation.

Chief Electoral Officer, Ashutosh Jindal told reporters that the polls were incident free and barring a few complaints, EVMs functioned well and in case of minor problems they were either changed or repaired.

The electoral fates of 13 candidates, including CPI(M)'s Shankar Prasad Dutta, secretary of the state unit of CITU, Congress' Arunoday Saha, former vice-Chancellor of Tripura Central University, Sudhindra Dasgupta, BJP's state unit Chief and Chairman of the state unit of TMC and former minister Ratan Chakraborty, were sealed in EVMs.

The CPI(M) had won the seat ten out of 15 times between 1952 and 2009. Since 1996 the CPI(M) consistently won this seat.

Chief Minister and CPI-M politburo member Manik Sarkar told reporters after casting his vote, "In reality there is no wave like Modi wave in the country. It is actually the creation of the corporate media."

Polling for the East Tripura (ST Reserve) seat would be held on April 12. There are two LS seats in the state.