Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 28

The civic elections in Tripura, the first major poll held in the state after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the roll back of the three controversial farm laws, was swept by the ruling BJP.

Bags all 51 seats in Agartala MC

Not a single Opposition candidate could win from any ward of the 51-member Agartala Municipal Corporation

• 165 seats won in seven municipal councils and six nagar panchayats
• 112 seats won unopposed; the BJP contested all 334 seats
• 20% vote share of TMC; 2nd position on 26 seats of Agartala MC

Fact-finding team in Agartala

The Editors Guild of India has decided to send a three-member fact-finding team to Agartala in view of the reports of draconian criminal laws being used to prevent the media from reporting on acts of violence in Tripura. The team members will meet officials, journalists and members of the civil society.

The party won a mindboggling 329 out of 334 seats spread over 13 urban local bodies, including the Agartala Municipal Corporation.

For the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC), the first poll fought by it outside Bengal at a time when the party is making efforts to expand its base, the Tripura results came as a shock. The TMC could win only one seat.

The CPM-led Left Front, the main Opposition party, won three seats. The remaining one seat was won by the TIPRA led by Tripura royal family scion Pradyot Deb Barma.

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb thanked and congratulated the voters for reposing their faith in the BJP. “People of Tripura were being trampled upon. The voters have responded to these insults,” he told the media in Agartala today.

The BJP won all 51 seats in the Agartala Municipal Corporation. TMC candidates were the runners-up in 26 seats. The CPM, which had the majority in the outgoing MC, came second in the remaining 25 seats.

Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee, who is the TMC in-charge in Tripura, claimed the party emerged as the principal Opposition party following the civic poll results.

“It is exceptional for a party beginning with negligible presence to successfully contest municipal elections and emerge as the principal Opposition in the state with more than 20 per cent vote share,” Abhishek said in a tweet.

How the TMC general secretary arrived at the figure of 20 per cent vote share was not immediately clear.