Decks ready for first phase of Parliamentary, byelections

Agartala, Apr 18, 2024, By Our Correspondent

All arrangements for conducting elections in Tripura West Parliamentary constituency and byelection to Ramnagar Assembly constituency, which will go to voting on Friday, have been completed, said a poll official on Thursday.All the polling parties will be reaching to their respective polling stations with poll materials- EVMs and VVPATs by Thursday to conduct the elections free and fair, Returning Officer (RO), Tripura West Parliamentary constituency, Vishal Kumar said.The parliamentary constituency has as many as 1682 polling booths and around 20,000 polling personnel will be engaged in the voting process, he said adding all the assured facilities were extended to the booths so that the electors don’t face any inconvenience.“All the polling booths will be manned by the central paramilitary forces while the other forces will also be made available to ensure peace during the polling day. Live streaming is also installed in all the booths and the entire polling will be monitored from a control room”, he said.Although nine candidates are in the fray in Tripura West Lok Sabha constituency, the battle will be mainly between BJP candidate Biplab Kumar Deb and state Congress president Asish Kumar Saha. A total of 14.61 lakh voters are eligible to exercise their franchise. Of them, 7.33 lakh are male while the number of female voters is 7.28 lakh.In the Ramnagar Assembly by-election, the battle line has been drawn between BJP candidate, Agartala Mayor Dipak Majumer, and former CPI(M) MLA Ratan Das.Altogether 54,669 electors will be eligible to decide the fate of the two candidates. The northeastern state has a tradition of recording low polling percentage on Parliamentary elections compared to the Assembly elections