Tripura LS Poll: 80.40% voting turnout recorded till 5 PM

Tripura recorded 80.40% voting turnout in the first phase of 18th Lok Sabha election till 5 PM on Friday, said Returning Officer Dr Vishal Kumar.

Addressing a press conference here in his chamber on Friday evening, RO Dr Vishal Kumar said, “The voting turnout rested at 80.40% till 5 pm today and the figure is expected to cross the record of the previous Lok Sabha election which recorded 82.4%.”

He said that the highest voting turnout of 85.64% is recorded at Belonia and the lowest of 68.64% is recorded in Ramnagar assembly constituency, where simultaneous election was held for both by-election and Lok Sabha.

The polling parties have already started moving back to 7 locations to store the EVMs and VVPATs. The 7 locations include – 1 in West district at Umakanta Academy, 3 in Sepahijala district, 1 in Gomati district and rest 2 are in South Tripura district, he told reporters.

“There has been no record of violence, injury and property damage in the election process in the West Tripura Parliamentary constituency,” he said, adding that the state election commission has received at least 6 written complaints.

Ruling out the oppositions’ allegation of proxy voting, prevention of general voters and polling agents, RO Dr Vishal Kumar Said that most of the allegations by the oppositions are found to be false with no specific input while some cases were taken up for action.

“Anything must substantiate with any reasons and specific information so that we can also find out how it can be corrected. So, anything which is very weak and in general is very difficult for anybody to correct,” he said.

He further said, “We requested them to give very specific information and if anywhere it is being find out that there is a lack of sincerity from our end, we will try to correct it.”

“We have gone through the CCTV footage and accordingly we suspended 2 polling personnel in Ramnagar constituency for allowing more than 1 voter in the polling booths,” he said, adding that one arrested was made in Mohanpur assembly for threatening polling agent.

Responding to the issue of lack of security cover as raised by the opposition, Dr Vishal Kumar said, “There were mostly central armed forces along with 100 sector officers and teams deployed in and around. There was no violence and no injuries were reported and other than this if there were some silent incidents being reported, our police and sector officer team intervened on this and brought the situation under control. There were sufficient police forces as compared to the previous Lok Sabha elections.”