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Polling for the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat began today in the Left Front-ruled state that has two parliamentary constituencies.
The seat will witness a multi-cornered contest among the CPI(M), the Congress, the TMC and the BJP.
Among the 13 candidates, major contestants are CPI(M)'s Shankar Prasad Dutta, secretary of the state unit of CITU, Congress' Arunoday Saha, former vice-chancellor of Tripura Central University, Sudhindra Dasgupta, BJP's state unit chief and chairman of the state unit of TMC and former minister Ratan Chakraborty.
The CPI(M) has won the seat ten out of 15 times between 1952 and 2009. Since 1996 the CPI(M) has consistently won this seat.
Of the 12,46,794 voters, 634702 are male and the remaining female.
Altogether 1,605 polling stations have been set up for the constituency of which only two have been identified as very vulnerable, 486 as vulnerable.
The Election Commission has set up nine all-women polling stations considering the track record of good performance by women personnel.
An additional 35 companies of security forces have been dispatched by the EC for deployment along with the state police.
The BSF has deployed additional forces along the 856 km Indo-Bangla international border.
Polling for the East Tripura (ST Reserve) seat will be held on April 12.
