Agartala: Dec 31: To ensure large polling turnout in the coming assembly poll 2023 in Tripura and to make it violence free, on Saturday the state election department launched the ‘Mission Zero Poll Violence & Mission 929’ during a campaign programme held at Pragna Bhavan in Agartala.
Tripura’s Chief Secretary JK Sinha, DGP Amitabh Ranjan, Chief Electoral Officer Kiran Gitte and senior officials of various central and state paramilitary forces participated in the launching.The mainly aims of the programme is toward developing confidence of the voters for increasing the voting percentage in ensuring Tripura Legislative Assembly elections 2023 and for a free, fair and peaceful elections with zero poll violence and which is one of the major concerns and challenges for smooth conduct of elections.
Over the years, Tripura has set an exemplary trend of higher poll percentage as Elections are always held in festive mood in the State. The voter turnout of 2013 assembly poll had reached its peak at 91.82 percent and the female voters turnout had outnumbered men voters by 2.13 percentage.
However, during to 2018 assembly poll the voting percentage had dropped by 2.44 percent and the turnout came down to 89.38 percent.
Statistics revealed that although the voting percentage was very high in majority of polling stations but due to various reasons in 929 polling stations the polling percentage was below 88 percent and which ultimately affected the overall turnout of the state. Study revealed that a section of senior citizen, young voter voters who are engaged with higher education or working outside the state were not in a position to turn up on the day of election.
So depending on these facts, this time a special focus will be given to these identified 929 polling stations for exercising intensive VEEP (voters education and electoral participation) campaign in order to ensure that the state’s average voter turnout is above 92% in the next general election. Taking into all consideration of the fact, awareness activities are being intensively conducted in all those polling station areas in advance.
Moreover, the Election Commission has also taken several necessary measures including advance deployment of adequate security coverage and area domination by central armed paramilitary force personnel beside micro level strategy to face the challenge of poll related violence in order to grow confidence among the voters and reassure free, fair and peaceful elections so that voters come out without any fear to cast their votes. At present, the total number of polling stations in the state is 3328 and the election is scheduled by the end of February.
