23.1.18

Tripura, Meghalaya & Nagaland to vote

The Election Commission of India has announced the schedule for the assembly elections in three states in the Northeast – Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

Polling will be held in Tripura on February 18 while Meghalaya and Nagaland will go to the polls on February 27. Counting for all three states will be held on March 3. The terms of the 60-member assemblies in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura are due to expire on March 6, 13 and 14 respectively.

Chief election commissioner Achal Kumar Joti said that voter-verified paper audit trail will be used in these elections, a first for the three states that have seen the use of electronic voting machines or EVMs for the past two decades.

Just as in the recent Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh polls, the VVPAT slips will be tallied with the EVM votes in one booth of each constituency. “There was no mismatch between the EVM votes and paper trail tallied during the last two elections,” Joti said.

The limit of expenditure is ₹20 lakh per candidate in all three states, he said.

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