Mizoram conducts peaceful polls

Aizawl: Moderate polling was recorded on Tuesday for the assembly elections in the north eastern state of Mizoram with about 30 per cent of voters exercising their franchise till midday.

The state assembly has 40 seats.

"Polling is going on peacefully with a turnout of an estimated 30 per cent recorded till 12.30pm Polling is expected to pick up later in the day," said Lalhmingthanga, the state's joint chief electoral officer.

In some of the polling stations, voting had to be stopped for a while after the electronic voting machines (EVM) developed technical snags. Voting for the 40-member state legislature began at 7am.

There are 611,124 people eligible voters of which 308,884 are women. There were 206 candidates, including nine women and 33 independents.

"The Election Commission has put in place 1,098 electronic voting machines in all the 1,026 polling stations across the state," the election official said. About 9,000 poll officials had been deployed to conduct the elections. Over 60 per cent of them were classified as hyper-sensitive or sensitive.

Tuesday's vote would decide the fate of Chief Minister Zoramthanga, state Congress chief Lalthanhawla and Brigadier T. Sailo of the United Democratic Alliance and several top leaders of various parties.

Besides Zoramthanga, Lalthanhawla and Sailo are the chief ministerial candidates of their respective parties.