Polling booths capture foiled in Tripura tribal council polls

Elections to the 30-member Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), which governs two-third of the northeastern state's territory, was underway amid heavy security on Tuesday. There were some reports of violence in the polling booths. However, the police personnel controlled the situation and polling resumed.

Agartala: Incidents of sporadic violence rocked Tripura Tribal District Council polls on Tuesday as stray incidents like booth capturing attempts, threatening voters and attempts to manipulate the election process had been reported in several parts of the state. The state election commission's role was also under several questions as it could not issue the first update of voting percentages. However, sources in political parties claimed that casting of around 70 per cent was over by 2:30 pm.

According to reports, tension prevailed at Dhariyatal ADC village under the Amtali-Golaghati ADC constituency, where a group of miscreants allegedly sponsored by some political parties ransacked the polling station. Such was the scale of violence that the doors of the schools where polling was being conducted was broken into pieces and some of the furniture was thrown out of the rooms. Soon a police team rushed to the spot and in its bid to hold control over the gradually slipping out condition fired one round in open. After a small interval, the poll resumed in presence of adequate security arrangements.

In the Bodhjungnagar-Waki Nagar constituency located in the outskirts of Agartala City, poll officials closed the doors and stopped the poll process to avert miscreants from entering the polling station. The poll officials informed the media that a group was trying to capture the booth. Sensing trouble they stopped polling and after adequate numbers of police personnel reached the spot, polls have been resumed.

At some select booths of the Maharani-Chelagang constituency, people boycotted voting in face of consistent threats by some stray groups. Police officials reached the spot and were convinced to cast their votes without being influenced by any kind of pressure. Later, in some parts, local women chased some of the unknown infiltrators who tried to prevent the locals from voting.

As far as the manipulation of the poll process is concerned, at Ramchandraghat constituency under Khowai district, locals denied casting their votes after they discovered that the symbol of the TIPRA moth party was not visible in the EVM. It was later discovered that a sort of white paper kind of thing was pasted at the pineapple symbol--belonged to TIPRA motha. Vote casting was stopped for some hours there and it was resumed after the visit of the Assistant Returning Officer.

At Lembucherra, some miscreants attacked voters to prevent them and police arrangements were tightened up. At South Tripura, some IPFT workers were mercilessly beaten up. IPFT candidate Dhananjoy Tripura accused police of playing a partial role after the incident took place. One person was left grievously injured at Belonia after a convoy of local Mondoll president was attacked by miscreants. Similarly, at Shamukcherra, police's timely intervention thwarted a scuffle between IPFT and TIPRA motha taking a violent turn.

According to official sources, reports of EVM malfunctioning were also reported and most of these were under the process of repair. According to State Election Commission sources, no reports had yet been received by the EC regarding vote percentage cast yet.

Sixteen companies of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), 5,684 Tripura State Rifles (TSR) jawans, 3,435 police personnel and 263 Home Guards were deployed for smooth conduct of the elections, Assistant Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Subrata Chakraborty said.

"Vehicle-borne escorts have also been provided to the election observers and leaders of recognised political parties, and personal security officers to the contesting candidates," he said.

Altogether, 157 candidates are in the fray -- 14 of the BJP, 28 of the Left Front, 28 of Congress, 17 of the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) and four of the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT).

A total of 8,65,041 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise. Of them, 4,36,548 are males and 4,28,490 females. In all, 1,244 polling stations have been set up in 1,060 places across the tribal council area.