Counting of votes begins for Tripura bypolls amid tight security

Counting of votes for the bypolls in Tripura's two Assembly constituencies of Dhanpur and Boxanagar commenced on Friday amid tight security, officials said

Agartala: Counting of votes for the bypolls in Tripura’s two Assembly constituencies of Dhanpur and Boxanagar commenced on Friday amid tight security, officials said.

Polling was held on Tuesday and 86.56 per cent of the 93,495 voters have cast their ballots.

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According to election officials, counting of the votes is being held in two centres at the Sonamura Girls’ Higher Secondary school in Sepahijala district under massive security cover.

Claiming large-scale intimidation, rigging and irregularities by members and workers of the state’s ruling BJP on the polling day and the Election Commission’s inactiveness to deal with the “terror and misdeeds”, the CPI (M)-led Left Front have boycotted the ballot counting.

Addressing the media, CPI (M) Tripura state Secretary Jitendra Choudhury said: “Due to the large-scale intimidation and attack of the ruling BJP cadres, the party’s polling agents could not attend in more than 50 per cent of the 110 polling stations in the two seats during the day of polling on Tuesday.

“There was silent rigging in both the constituencies by the BJP workers. The police and election officials overlooked this new style of intimidating the opposition voters and election agents.”

Several ministers and BJP leaders violating the Election Commission’s norms conducted and supervised the irregularities even though they cannot enter into the areas of the two Assembly constituencies as they are not voters or residents of these areas, the Left leader claimed.

He said that the party had on Tuesday demanded to cancel the election and conduct fresh polls, but the Election Commission remained silent.

The other two main opposition parties in the state, Congress and the Tipra Motha Party (TMP), did not field any candidates in the two seats to prevent division of vote share.

The CPI (M) has nominated Mizan Hossain in Boxanagar and Kaushik Chanda in Dhanpur, while the ruling BJP has fielded Taffajal Hossain in Boxanagar and Bindu Debnath in Dhanpur.

In February, the Left parties and the Congress had contested the elections together with seat-sharing arrangements, while the TMP had gone solo.

The by-election in Dhanpur seat was necessitated after Union Minister Pratima Bhoumik resigned from the Assembly, days after she was elected from the seat as a BJP nominee.

The Muslim-dominated Boxanagar Assembly seat fell vacant after the death of sitting CPI-M MLA Samsul Haque, who died on July 19 following a cardiac attack.