সকালেই বুথে ভোটারদের ভিড়, ভোট দিলেন রাজদীপ সুস্মিতাও
Sushmita-Rajdeep votes at Silchar, maximum voters turn-out in morning

April 16: The forerunners of the prestigious Silchar parliamentary constituency seat Sushmita Dev of Indian National Congress (INC) and Dr. Rajdeep Roy of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came out in the morning to cast their votes. While BJP candidate Dr. Rajdeep Roy cast his vote at Radhamadhab Balika Vidyalay, Sushmita Dev of Congress cast her vote at Nityamoyi Vidyalaya, Tarapur.

According to the official poll percentage released by the office of the chief electoral officer (CEO) till 9 am Nagaon recorded a poll percentage of 9.62 per cent, Mangaldoi recorded 11.32 per cent, Silchar recorded 13.29 per cent, Karimganj recorded 11.82 per cent while the Autonomous Districts (SC) constituency recorded a poll percentage of 12 per cent.

Beating the heat, long queue could be noticed in majority of the polling centres across all the three districts of Barak Valley. People stood in the queue even before the stipulated time of 7 AM. At few of the centres voting started little late due to malfunctioning of EVM. At Abdul Kalam Azad LP School, voting started at 8.10 AM due to problems in the EVM.

Similarly, at polling station No. 71 (B) under Katigorah Assembly constituency, voting started at around 7.50 in the morning due to malfunctioning of EVM. There are a total of 1033 voters in this particular centre. In the Rangpur No 1 polling station, voting started late due to EVM glitches. Polling was delayed in polling station Number 200 in Silchar owing to a malfunctioning of VVPAT machine. However, the machine was fixed later on and subsequently voting resumed.

Meanwhile, reports has also come in about malfunctioning of VVPAT machine at 144 Bidrohipar LP School under Sonai Assembly segment at around 8.30 in the morning. The Sector Officer was informed by the Presiding Officer and he is supposed to have replaced the VVPAT.

As per sources, in another school at Dholai Sector 40, Control Unit was found to display error before the start of Mock Poll as the machine exhibited the date of poll as 16-04-2019 instead of 18-04-2019. As such, the Sector Officer had to replace the Control Unit.

A total of 1191289 (613931 Male, 577283 Female & 75 third gender) electorates will be exhibiting their right to franchise for the prestigious Silchar seat, whereas 1338005 (696638 Male, 641349 Female & 18 third gender) voters will vote for the Karimganj seat.