Agartala, Jan 18, 2023, TRIPURATIMES Desk

Agartala, Jan 18: A three-tier security would be deployed for conducting the thirteenth assembly elections in Tripura scheduled on February 16 next, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Kiran Gitte said on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference at the civil secretariat, the CEO said, Central Armed Paramilitary Forces (CAPFs) would be deployed in the first layer while TSR and Tripura Police personnel would be deployed in the second and third layers respectively. He said, the elections machineries are prepared for the ensuing polls.

Speaking to the media, the CEO also said, there would be six types of observers- general observers, counting observers, police observers, micro observers, special observers and expenditure observers.

The Chief Electoral Officer said, each of the constituencies would have one Returning Officer. Braille voter information slip would be made available.

He said, no election programme would be allowed from 10 pm to 6 am. All the District Magistrates, Returning Officers, Assistant Returning Officers and police officers were already imparted training.

This time, the candidates may file their nominations online. The political parties were imparted training on the online process, the CEO said, adding that 50 percent more than the required EVMs would be kept ready. 

He also said, webcasting would be arranged in almost all polling booths. Offline system would be followed in the polling stations where mobile network is not available.

While appealing to the voters to take part in the festival of democracy without any fear, he assured that all necessary steps would be put in place to ensure free, fair and violence-free election. 

Two Additional Chief Electoral Officers- Ushajen Mog and Subhashis Bandopadhyay were also present in the press conference.

As per the final electoral rolls published on January 5 last, total 28,13,478 voters are there in Tripura. The figure included 14,14,576 male voters, 13,98,825 male voters and 77 third genders. The total number of service electors is 10,344. There are 3,328 polling stations in 2,504 locations of the state.

The total number of PwD voters in the state is 17,297. There are 38,039 voters in the 80+ age group and 679 voters in the 100+ age group.