Tripura Local Bodies Bypolls Announced

AGARTALA: The Tripura State Election Commission on Saturday announced byelections to the 3,386 vacant seats of three-tier gram panchayats on September 30. The counting of votes would be done on October 3, Tripura State Election Commissioner G. Kameswara Rao told the media.

“The byelections were necessitated mostly due to the resignations and death of the elected representatives. The notification of the bypolls would be issued on September 4,” he said. Of the 3,386 vacant seats in the three-tier local rural bodies, where byelections would be held, 3,207 seats in gram panchayats followed by 161 seats in panchayat samities and 18 seats in Zilla Parishad. Reacting to the announcements of the byelections to the local rural bodies, opposition Communist Party of India-Marxists (CPI-M) and Congress criticised the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for “forcible resignations of the elected representatives belonging to opposition parties.” “Around 96 percent of the total elected representatives of CPI-M and other non-BJP parties were forced to resign following BJP leaders’ and workers’ threat after the saffron party-led coalition government assumed office in March,” CPI-M central committee member Bijan Dhar told the media.