Tripura Bharatiya Janata Party Secures a Clean Sweep in Gram Panchayat Polls

Securing a huge victory in 113 out of 130 gram Panchayat seats in the three-tier panchayat by-elections, Tripura’s ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has defeated its opposition parties in huge differences of votes. This victory of the ruling party, is, however, criticized by the Congress according to whom BJP has won the polls through a farcical exercise.

State Election Commissioner G Kameswara Rao said that the counting of votes took place on Wednesday. Rao added, “No incident of violence was reported from anywhere. Counting was completed in a peaceful manner.” Speaking about the results of the panchayat samiti seats, Rao said that the BJP has also won five out of the seven seats.

Among the other political parties, the ruling party alliance partner Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) won on nine gram panchayat seats. Opposition party CPI (M) and Congress won 4 seats each in the polls. On the other hand, there will be a re-polling in two gram panchayat seats in Khowai Rural Development Block of Khowai district on October 5 and its results will be announced on October 7.

Remarkably, the by-polls results of different gram panchayat bodies were already declared by the State Election Commission on September 1. But as a large number of elected public representatives resigned from these local self-government bodies, the need for the by-polls became necessary.

This needs to be mentioned here that the Bharatiya Janata Party has won 96 per cent of the seats uncontested and there were polls for only 130 gram panchayat seats along with five seats of the panchayat samiti bodies. The polling took place on September 30 with a voter turnout of 81.03 per cent.

BJP spokesperson Dr Ashok Sinha expressed his party’s happiness over the victory. Tripura Pradesh Congress vice president Tapas Dey, on the other hand, said “They have fallen out with their own ally IPFT during the by-poll process. There were several clashes between the two alliance partners. This poll process was a farcical exercise.”