Agartala, March 01, 2023: Fate of 259 candidates for 60 assembly constituencies in Tripura will be decided through the people’s mandate on Thursday next. The counting process of votes in 21 centres will begin 8 AM while 60 counting observers have reached the state.
The 259 candidates in frays consists of 55 candidates nominated from BJP, 47 from Left Front including one independent candidate, 42 from TIPRA Motha party, 28 from TMC and 13 from Congress. Apart from that, parties like CPIML, TSP and RSP have candidates in one seat each. Seven candidates contested from unrecognized political parties.
As many as 28,14,584 electorates comprising 14,15,233 male and 13,99,289 female voters were enrolled for exercising their democratic rights, but 24,66,511 electorates comprising 12,18,764 male and 12,47,705 female voters have casted their votes recording a percentage of 87.63 percent on February 16 last in 3,327 polling stations across state.
Among these polling stations, there were 97 polling stations manned by women, 88 model polling stations, 33 polling stations manned by youth polling workers and 44 polling stations manned by persons with disabilities (PwDs).
The Chief Secretary JK Sinha, DGP Amitabh Ranjan, and CEO Kiran Gitte visited all eight districts in last five days and inspected all the arrangements for the counting of votes. A series of meetings with the representatives of all political parties, candidates, and with their agents. The higher officials of Election Commission and state administration appealed to them to maintain peace and harmony on the day of counting and after that too. Not only this, peace meetings were organized yesterday and today at 3,327 polling stations in presence of eminent citizens and officials.
Media centres have been set up at each Counting Centre with reasonable facilities like telephone, data communication network, etc. Returning Officer shall deploy one senior officer to be in-charge of the Media Centre, preferably from the Information and Cultural Affairs department.
However, many organizations predicted that BJP alone will retain in power with absolute majority in the exit polls while Left Front being the opposition and TIPRA Motha favouring a good number of seats.
Meanwhile, the Chief Electoral Officer Kiran Gitte said that the counting of votes will be done from 8 am in the state’s 60 assembly constituencies in a total of 21 constituencies.
He said that the journalists will have the facility of gathering news in a specific room inside the counting center. He said that the counting center has a three-level security ring. The VVPAT will be counted for 5 polling stations in each assembly constituency. These 5 polling stations will be determined through a lottery.
Gitte said that 60 assembly constituencies will be counted in an average of 5 rounds. Postal ballots will be counted first from 8 am on March 2 counting day. EVM counting will start after the postal ballot counting is over.
