Shillong, May 6: It is often said that today's youth is tomorrow's future.

The saying could be related to the Garo hills region, which is going to elect a new parliamentarian in the byelection on May 16 to represent Tura parliamentary constituency in Lok Sabha in place of late Purno Agitok Sangma, the Lok Sabha MP who passed away on March 4.

While the bypoll is a straight contest between late Purno Sangma's youngest son, Conrad Kongkal Sangma of the National People's Party (NPP), and chief minister Mukul Sangma's wife Dikkanchi D. Shira of the ruling Congress, perhaps the power to decide the fate of the two candidates, lies more with the young people.

For this byelection, the Tura Lok Sabha seat has a total of 6,22,189 voters - 3,15,255 males and 3,06,934 females. However, statistics revealed that of the total electorate of Tura Lok Sabha constituency, more than half of them are young voters aged between 18 and 35 years.

There are 3,46,242 young voters in the age group of 18 to 35 years, who are eligible to exercise their franchise, including 8,810 electors who are 18, and 14,938 electors who are 19.

The rest - 2,75,947 voters - are in different age groups.

With polling day coming closer, the two parties (NPP and Congress) have tried their best to win the hearts of the electorate. However, it would be interesting to know which side the 3 lakh-plus young voters favour more, Conrad or Dikkanchi.

While 38-year-old Conrad was the Meghalaya finance minister during 2008-2009 and leader of Opposition in the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly (2009 to 2013), 50-year-old Dikkanchi is a first-time MLA of the Congress, currently representing Mahendraganaj Assembly constituency.

Dikkanchi is one among the five women legislators in the Meghalaya Assembly and earlier held the post of chairman of the Meghalaya Resource Mobilisation and Employment Generation Council. She has now quit the post following her selection as candidate for the Lok Sabha byelection.

Apart from the young voters, the number of electors who are above 60 years is 38,918, while those who are 80 years and above is 2,172.

Moreover, the constituency also has at least 20 electors, who are above 100 years, with Tangnon Sangma being the oldest elector. He is 114 years old. Tangnon is from Bikonggre polling station under Phulbari Assembly constituency.

Of the 945 polling stations, 437 polling booths have been categorised as hypersensitive, of which 317 stations were considered hypersensitive because of militancy, and 120 stations because of other reasons.

There are 126 sensitive polling stations and the rest 382 are considered normal.

Meghalaya chief electoral officer Fredrick Roy Kharkongor told The Telegraph today that the Union ministry of home affairs had sanctioned an additional 10 companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) for the Tura Lok Sabha byelection to be deployed in the five districts of Garo hills.

"We had sought an additional 33 companies of CAPF to be deployed in Garo hills for the upcoming Tura Lok Sabha bypoll, apart from 19 existing companies but the Centre has given us an additional 10 companies," he said.

Kharkongor said the polling station categorised as hypersensitive may change from time to time.