Agartala, Mar 20 (UNI) Around 17,000 resettled Bru voters from Mizoram are set to cast their votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in both the seats of Tripura, slated to be held on April 19 and 26, said Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Puneet Agarwal here on Wednesday.
Tripura has registered about 28.58 lakh voters for the upcoming general elections, including the Brus rehabilitated across 10 locations of Tripura following a quadruple agreement signed in 2020 who had been residing in six camps of North Tripura for more than 22 years, although they were the voters of Mizoram.
About 14,62,875 voters enrolled in West Tripura and 13,95,121 in East Tripura for this poll.
The Mizoram government didn’t agree to take them back, and finally, the Tripura government agreed to rehabilitate them in selected locations of the state on humanitarian grounds.
The process of rehabilitation has still been going on. As of now, over 12,000 Bru voters have been resettled in the East Tripura parliamentary constituency, and the rest in West Tripura will cast their franchise in the respective locations, Agarwal stated.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has designated as many as 12 auxiliary polling stations for facilitating the voters of Bru settlements to conduct polling. Besides the deployment of security forces, the administration has also created several facilities for the smooth conduct of elections, the CEO maintained.
He underlined that at least 70 companies of CAPF have so far been deployed across Tripura, well ahead of the announcement of the poll schedule.
In terms of voter enrollment, approximately 1,000 new voters have been added to the electoral rolls following a special summary revision, and about 69,782 first-time voters cast their vote in this election.
“Tripura has a total of 3,350 polling stations, including auxiliary stations this time due to an improvement in the elector population ratio, which has increased from 667 to 675, and the gender ratio has risen to 991 from 989 in Tripura,” Agarwal said.
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