Tripura registers 45 per cent voting in first six hours

About 45 per cent of voters had exercised their franchise in the first six hours of polling in the Tripura Assembly election, which began at 7 am today, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Tapas Roy said.
The polls are being held in 59 of the state's 60 Assembly constituencies. The election in the Charilam constituency was postponed following the death of the CPI(M) candidate, Ramendra Narayan Debbarma, seven days ago.
No incidents of violence were reported from anywhere in the state, officials said.
About 4 per cent of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines were found to have developed glitches in the first few hours, Roy said.

Earlier in the day, the additional CEO had said the voting process was delayed in some booths of West Tripura, Khowai, Unakoti districts as there were certain issues with the EVMs.
"The engineers rushed to the booths and put everything in order," Roy had added.

The state in-charge of the BJP, Sunil Deodhar, met Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sriram Taranikanti around 12.30 pm and urged him to take immediate steps to replace the faulty machines, the general secretary of the party, Rajiv Bhattacharya, said.
"The CEO has assured Deodhar to do the needful. The party in-charge has also requested the CEO to extend the time of voting from 4 pm to 6 pm, because many voters had left the polling stations in the wake of the technical glitches," he added.

Even if the voting time was extended, communicating it to the voters would be difficult, state Congress vice-president Tapas Dey said.
Ruling CPI(M) leader and MLA Haricharan Sarkar also urged the election office to rectify the technical glitches and ensure a hassle-free poll.
State Director General of Police Akhil Kumar Shukla said security measures were put in place across Tripura for the Assembly election.
The BSF was asked to keep a close vigil on the 856-km-long India-Bangladesh border in Tripura and 300 companies of the central armed forces, along with the state armed personnel and police, were deployed across the state to ensure a free-and-fair election, he added.

The CEO said the Election Commission (EC) had appointed police observers, general observers and expenditure observers to oversee the entire poll process.