Stage set for polling in 7 seats in Assam, Tripura and Manipur in second phase

Guwahati/Agartala: Seven Lok Sabha seats in the northeast regions – five in Assam, one in Tripura and a portion of one seat in strife-torn Manipur will go to polls in the second phase of voting to be held on Friday. 
In Assam, 77,09,276 voters will decide the fates of 61 candidates in the fray for the five seats – Diphu, Nagaon, Silchar, Karimganj and Darrang-Udalguri. Voting will take place in 9,133 polling stations. 
The role of Muslim voters, who are dominant in Nagaon and Karimganj will be crucial in this phase. In 2019, four of these five seats were won by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while Congress had won Nagaon. 
This time in Nagaon, sitting Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi will be up against BJP’s Suresh Bora, a Congress leader who joined the saffron party last year. Aminul Islam of All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), who is the sitting MLA from Dhing, is the third important contestant from this seat. 
For Karimganj, 24 candidates are in the fray. It was previously a Scheduled Tribe reserved seat which now falls under the general category. Darrang-Udalguri has five candidates, including sitting BJP MP Dilip Saikia. Silchar seat \has eight candidates while Diphu has five. 
In Tripura, polling will take place for the East Tripura constituency in the second phase. Of the total 13,96,761 electors for the East constituency, 7,02,511 are males, 6,94,237 are females and the rest 13 are from the third gender.
A total of 1,664, including a new polling station at South Tripura has been set up for the Bru migrants to vote. 
Nine candidates are in the fray in East Tripura but the main contest would be between the ruling BJP candidate Kriti Devi Debbarma and opposition INDIA alliance candidate former Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA Rajendra Reang.
Devi is the youngest daughter of the late Kirit Bikram Kishore Manikya and the elder sister of TIPRA Motha party founder Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma. 
Chief Electoral Officer Puneet Agarwal urged voters to come out and vote peacefully. Saju Vaheed A, the returning officer of the East Tripura constituency, said that arrangements for peacefully conducting polls have been made. 
Tight security has been deployed along the Indo-Bangla international border and strict vigil was kept at all naka points to avoid any kind of unwanted incident from occurring before the poll. 
In Manipur, four candidates are in the fray for polling for a portion of the Outer Manipur seat. “There will be 848 polling stations and an additional 9 special polling stations for people displaced by the ethnic violence in the state,” said Chief Electoral Officer Pradeep Kumar Jha. 
The phase one of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections began on April 19 and will continue till June 1. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.