NE states have voted for all 25 LS seats in region

Agartala/Guwahati, April 24 (IANS): With the conclusion of the third phase of voting in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, polling in all the 25 parliamentary constituencies of the eight Northeastern states have been completed, Election Commission (EC) officials said on Wednesday. “In the third phase on Tuesday, the elections were held for four of the 14 seats in Asaam and one of the two Lok Sabha constituencies in Tripura,” an EC official said. He said that in the first phase on April 11, voting was held for five Lok Sabha seats in Assam, two each in Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, and one each in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. In the second phase on April 18, polling took place in five constituencies in Assam and one in Manipur. Citing the “non-conducive security situation”, as reported by the Tripura Chief Electoral Officer Sriram Taranikanti, the Special Central Police Observer Mrinal Kanti Das, Returning Officer Vikas Singh and in intelligence inputs, the poll panel had deferred the voting in the Tripura East Lok Sabha seat from April 18 to April 23. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies, including the Naga People’s Front (1 seat), Meghalaya’s National Peoples’ Party (1 seat ) and the Sikkim Democratic Front (1 seat), together won 11 seats, with the dominant party bagging eight seats. The BJP had won seven seats in Assam and one in Arunachal Pradesh. The Northeast has been a Congress stronghold since 1952 and it also managed to win eight seats from the region in 2014 -- 3 in Assam, two in Manipur and one each in Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Assam-based All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) won three seats, while the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) secured two seats in Tripura. Independent candidate Naba Kumar Sarania (Hira) won from Assam’s Kokrajhar constituency. Currently, the BJP and its NDA allies are in power in all the eight Northeastern states, including in Sikkim.