AGARTALA, Sept 22 - Voting in the bye-election to the Badharghat Assembly constituency in Tripura will take place on Monday amidst tight security.
Although there are four candidates in the race, the electoral battle will be confined to three major parties � BJP, CPI(M) and Congress.
Tripura State Rifles and paramilitary personnel have already been deployed in and around all 71 polling booths in the constituency which has an electorate of 57,906. Of the total electorate, there are 28,508 women and 29,398 men voters. The entire polling process covering all the booths will be videographed.
Returning Officer Tapan Kumar Das on Sunday said that polling would begin at 7 am on Monday and end at 5 pm.
There will be four-tier security in and around the polling booths, Superintendent of Police (West) Ajit Pratap Singh said at a press conference here. Observers and micro observers will keep a close eye on the voting process. �Prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPC have been imposed within a 200-metre radius of all the polling booths with active deployment of security forces,� he said.
The bypoll was necessitated after sitting Badharghat MLA Dilip Sarkar died in April this year. Sarkar (62) was a former minister. In the 2018 Assembly elections, Sarkar won the seat by a margin of over 5,000 votes. Sarkar, elected to the state assembly five times since 1988, joined the BJP along with other Congress leaders in 2017.
