Over 86 percent votes cast in Tripura Monday

Agartala, April 8 (IANS) Over 86 percent of the 1.2 million electorate Monday cast their votes for one of the two Lok Sabha seats in Left-ruled Tripura, an official said here Tuesday.

"After the final reports reached here from four districts and after finishing calculations, over 86 percent of the 12.46 lakh voters cast their votes in the Tripura West constituency," Tripura Chief Electoral Officer Ashutosh Jindal told reporters.

"Turnout of women was a little higher than male voters - 85.39 percent of the 612,092 female electorate cast their votes, while 85.35 percent of the 634.702 male voters cast their ballot. Besides, 0.63 percent votes were polled through postal ballot," he said.

In the 2009 polls, voter turnout was 84.45 percent and in 2004 it was 67.39 percent in the entire state.

Tripura created history in the 2013 assembly polls when a record 93.57 percent ballots were cast. The state recorded 92 percent polling in the 2008 assembly elections.

In the last assembly elections held in February last year, more women than men cast votes.

"In the assembly polls, 90.89 percent of the total 1,198,970 males cast their votes while 93.02 percent of the 1,156,476 female electorate exercised their right to franchise," Jindal said.

Polling in the tribal-reserved Tripura East constituency will be held April 12.

In Monday's polling, electoral fortunes of 13 candidates were sealed. They included Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Sankar Prasad Datta, Congress's Arunoday Saha, Bharatiya Janata Party's state president Sudhindra Chandra Dasgupta, and Trinamool Congress state chief Ratan Chakraborty.

In 2009, CPI-M's Khagen Das defeated Sudip Roy Barman of the Congress.

The Left has won from West Tripura 11 times since the first Lok Sabha elections of 1952 and the Congress four times.