Agartala: Campaign ended on Saturday for the April seven election to the West Lok Sabha seat, one of the two parliamentary constituencies in Left Front ruled Tripura.
The seat will witness multi-corner contest among CPI(M), Congress, Trinamool Congress and the BJP. Among the 13 candidates, major contestants are CPI(M)’s Shankar Prasad Dutta, secretary of the state unit of CITU; Congress’ Arunoday Saha, former vice-Chancellor of Tripura Central University; Sudhindra Dasgupta,BJP’s state unit chief; and Chairman of the state unit of TMC and former minister Ratan Chakraborty.
The CPI(M) has won the seat ten out of 15 times between 1952 and 2009. Since 1996 the CPI(M) has consistently won this seat. The CPI(M) has stressed on good governance during campaigning and highlighted that the state government has received 45 awards from the Centre for successful implementation of its flagship programmes.
The Congress has claimed that the Left Front has been alienated from the people, while both the TMC and BJP have alleged that the state has been turned into the cadre raj of the Front.
BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Tripura Chief Minister and CPI(M) politburo member Manik Sarkar have been the key campaigners in the state.
Of the 12,46,794 voters, 634702 are male and the remaining female. Altogether 1,605 polling stations have been set up for the constituency of which only two have been identified as very vulnerable, 486 as vulnerable.
The Election Commission has set up nine all-women polling stations considering the track record of good performance by women polling personnel.
An additional 35 companies of security forces have been dispatched by the ECI for deployment along with the state police.
The BSF has deployed additional forces along the 856 km Indo-Bangla international border. BSF DIG B S Rawat said watch is being kept on the international border and security agencies in Tripura are closely monitoring the intelligence inputs. (PTI)
