Left heading for victory in Tripura council polls

AGARTALA - The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) led Left Front headed for a landslide victory in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council polls, officials said Friday.

According to the state election commission, the Left Front won 19 seats and is leading in eight seats.

The council has 30 members, two of who are nominated. Polling in one seat was postponed after a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate died after being bitten by a dog.

“The Congress and other parties may not win a single seat this time,” an official of the state poll panel told reporters.

The CPI-M and its allies, the Communist Party of India (CPI), Forward Block and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), were pitted against the Congress and the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT).

The BJP and the Trinamool Congress also put up candidates for 22 and 13 seats respectively, while 43 independents were in the fray.

Despite an electoral pact with the Congress in West Bengal, the Trinamool fielded candidates against the Congress, which also snapped its 28-year alliance with the INPT before the council polls.

The council, which has jurisdiction over two-thirds of the state’s area, was constituted in 1985 after amending the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution to facilitate the socio-economic development of the tribals who constitute one third of Tripura’s 3.5 million population.

The council, one of the 16 tribal autonomous bodies of northeast India, is currently controlled by the Left parties.