Tripura bypolls: Over 38,000 people eligible to vote

Agartala: Over 38,000 voters are eligible to cast their votes in the Manu assembly by-poll in Tripura on Saturday, an official said in Agartala on Thursday. [caption id=“attachment_1707391” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AP[/caption] Tripura Chief Electoral officer Ashutosh Jindal said 38,843 voters, including 18,929 female voters, are eligible to vote. “Fortysix polling stations in 38 locations would be set up,” Jindal told IANS. He said the Election commission has appointed one expenditure observer and one general observer to oversee the election process. Jindal said 230 polling personnel and 38 micro-observers were appointed to hold the by-poll. The by-poll in the tribal reserve assembly segment was necessitated after former forest and rural development minister Jitendra Chaudhary, who won the seat for five times on the CPI-M ticket, was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Tripura East constituency. Though there are six candidates in the fray, the main fight would be between the ruling CPI-M candidate Pravat Chowdhury and Congress nominee Mailafru Mog. Chowdhury, who graduated from the Nagaland University in agriculture, recently resigned from a senior position in Tripura’s agriculture department to contest the elections. Mog could not pass the Madhyamik examination and has been a member of almost all non-Left parties at different times. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Nirmal Kumar in Tripura and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress has nominated Angthai Mog. Two tribal-based local parties, Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura and Indigenious People’s Front of Tripura, have also fielded their contenders in the by-polls. Tripura Chief Minister and CPI-M politburo member Manik Sarkar, senior leaders of the Left parties, opposition Congress leader Sudip Roy Barman and BJP’s state president have Sudhindra Dasgupta campaigned for their respective party candidates. IANS