New Delhi: Top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party including party chief J P Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and others met in Delhi on Thursday to finalise candidates for the upcoming Tripura assembly elections, as reported by the news agency PTI. The meeting was also attended by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, BJP's state incharge Mahesh Sharma and Rajya Sabha MP Biplab Deb.
Earlier in the day, BJP's Tripura unit core group members met at party leader and northeast incharge Sambit Patra's residence. The BJP is likely to finalise its candidates for the Tripura assembly elections on Friday in its central election committee meeting.
The 60-member Tripura assembly will go to polls on February 16. The last date for filling nominations is January 30. The counting of votes will be taken up on March 2. In 2018, the BJP formed the government for the first time in Tripura, ending the 20-year run of the CPI(M).
The four-cornered fight is expected between BJP, Congress, Left, and Trinamool Congress in Tripura where the BJP has changed the CM face to beat anti-incumbency. In 2018, the saffron party won 35 seats and unseated the 20-year incumbent CM, Manik Sarkar of CPI(M). 20 out of 60 seats were dominated by tribals in the last assembly elections held in the state. In the 2018 Tripura legislative assembly election, BJP won 33 seats, the IPFT won 4 seats, the CPI(M) won 15 seats, and the Congress won 1 seat.
Earlier, Rajiv Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, in a press briefing said that the Election Commission visited three states from January 11 to January 15 and held detailed review meetings. Altogether 28,13,478 electors are eligible to exercise their democratic right in the ensuing elections. A record of 65,044 new voters were included in the final electoral rolls.
The ACEO said security measures have been tightened across the northeastern state with central paramilitary forces holding area domination exercise to increase confidence among the electors.