Barely a week to go for the counting of votes, Tripura’s ruling BJP held a meeting of its 55 candidates in the Assembly elections, which Chief Minister Manik Saha described as the most peaceful in the Northeast state’s history. Saha told reporters that the meeting on Friday—attended also by leaders including Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Devvarma, BJP state president Rajib Bhattacharjee, state in-charge Mahesh Sharma and Phanindranath Sharma—reviewed the polls and discussed a host of issues such as ways to maintain law and order across the state to ensure peaceful counting of votes on March 2. The saffron party contested 55 out of the total 60 seats and allotted five seats to its alliance partner, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura. The BJP’s main contest is with the Left Front-Congress partnership, while royal scion Pradyot Kishore’s TIPRA Motha party is also considered to have a significant sway. It swept the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections two years ago. While the BJP exudes confidence of a smooth return to power, the Opposition Left Front-Congress partnership has claimed it is on course to dislodge the party with a thumping majority. CPM state secretary Jitendra Chaudhary said two days ago, “The ruling party will come down to a single digit. We cannot comment on the exact results since that would be a fake prediction as well. Any real exit poll must take people’s spontaneous voting into consideration and we feel it suggests the mandate will go against the BJP and in favour of peace, tranquillity democracy and secularism.” Chaudhary said that of the 20 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, the Left Front would get some seats but “others” would also get seats, without naming any political party. Overall 259 candidates including 31 women contested the polls. While the state voted on February 16 without major incidents of violence, barring five “stray incidents”, a series of incidents of post-poll violence have since rocked the state and at least 30 people were arrested in 22 cases. Over 20 people were injured and one died. Both the BJP and the Opposition have appealed to the people for peace. Tripura elections have witnessed high voter turnouts. The 2013 Assembly polls had a 93.57 per cent turnout and the 2018 polls an 89.8 per cent turnout. While the latest turnout this year was recorded as 89.95 per cent, it rose to around 92 per cent when postal ballots were added.
