Agartala, February 02, 2023: As many as 259 candidates are in the fray in the Tripura Assembly elections after the deadline for the withdrawal of nominations got over on Friday.

Addressing a press conference at West Tripura district’s DM office here in Agartala city, Chief Electoral Officer Kiran Gitte said that a total number of 310 candidates nominated from different political parties and independent have submitted their nomination papers as on January 30 last.

During scrutiny, 19 nomination papers were rejected on various grounds while 291 candidates’ paper were found to be valid on January 31 last. However, 32 candidates have withdrawn their nomination papers upto 3 PM on February 02 and 259 are contesting in the assembly polls slated to be held on February 16 next, he added.

Out of these 259 candidates, 55 are of Bharatiya Janata Party, 43 are of Communist Party of India (Marxist), 42 are of TIPRA Motha Party, 28 are of All India Trinamool Congress, 13 are of Indian National Congress, six are of Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura, two are of TPP, one each of CPI, CPI(ML), AIFB, TSP, RSP, seven are of other recognized party and 58 are independent candidates.

CEO said that the printing work of Ballot Paper will be completed by Friday and distributed among all the ROs. The election procedure through Postal Ballots in 23 sub-divisions will begin from February 08 next. There are over 10,000 service voters and EC will send electronic version of ballot paper to them.

Apart from this, Gitte said “There are 36,841 electorates aging 80 year and above and among them, 6,263 voters applied for exercising their democratic rights sitting at their respective home while 16,708 persons with disabilities (PwDs) voters are there in the state and among them, 1,460 electorates applied for online voting process which will begin from February 08 next.”

He further added that the Chief Secretaries and Director Generals of Police of the states sharing boundary with Tripura will held a meeting soon in sealing off the routes ahead of election.

It is worthy to mention here that there are 28 lakh 23 thousand 822 electorates including 10,344 service voters, 65,044 first-time voters, 17,297 persons with disabilities (PwDs), 77 third genders and 38,039 senior citizens i.e. 80 years and above in Tripura. 3,328 polling stations at 2,504 locations which was 25.73 lakh voters at 3,214 polling stations in the 2018 assembly election. The average voter per polling station is 845.