Aizawl: Polling for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Mizoram which is witnessing a three-cornered contest, will be held on Friday along with the by-poll to Hrangturzo Assembly seat.
The triangular contest is among ruling Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and United Democratic Front (UDF), which is an alliance of eight opposition parties. UDF comprises the main oppisition party Mizo National Front (MNF) and BJP besides, Zoram Nationalist Party, Mizoram People’s Conference, Maraland Democratic Front, Hmar People’s Conference, Paite Tribal Council and NCP. Congress has fielded its sitting MP C L Ruala, while UDF has nominated Robert Romawia Royte.
AAP has put up Michael Lalmanzuala as its candidate for the seat. Mizoram Lok Sabha seat has 7,02,189 voters, of whom 3,55,954 were women. There are 1,126 polling stations of which 385, mainly in the urban areas, would use the VVPAT system. Security arrangements have been made for the conduct of free and fair polls with the deployment of additional eight companies of central para-military forces apart from six state armed battalions and unarmed policemen. International borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh and inter-state borders have been sealed, official sources said.
The polling was originally scheduled for April 9 but the Election Commission postponed it to tomorrow after Mizoram-based civil society bodies called a 72-hour bandh in the state from April 7 in protest against its move to allow Bru refugees to vote in Tripura. The organisations had demanded that the EC should allow the refugees to cast their vote in Mizoram, which was turned down and the Bru voters, who are in camps in Tripura after being thrown out of Mizoram following ethnic violence with the Mizos in 1997, had exercised their franchise through postal ballot from April 1 to April 3.
Meanwhile, a pre-election alliance of eight parties in Mizoram has demanded the Election Commission to immediately transfer Aizawl district deputy commissioner and its superintendent of police, alleging bias against them. “The DC and SP of Aizawl district are extremely biased,” the UDF said in its complaint faxed to the EC on Wednesday. (PTI)