Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, January 28
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, Deputy CM Jishnu Dev Verma, Union minister Pratima Bhoumik and state BJP chief Ranjib Bhattacharjee figure in the first list of 48 candidates released by the BJP on Saturday for the February 16 Tripura elections.
Ex-CM Biplab Deb, now a Rajya Sabha MP, has not been fielded.
Saha will defend his seat Bordowali, and Verma has been fielded from his seat, Chaliram (reserved).
Pratima Bhoumik will contest from Dhanpur and Bhattacharjee from Banmalipur, the seat former Tripura CM Biplab Deb had won in 2018 when he became CM.
Of the 48 seats declared, the BJP has denied tickets to six sitting MLAs. These are Badrgaht’s Mimi Majumdar, Golghati’s Birendra Kishore Debberma, Nalchar’s Subhash Das, Matabari’s Biplab Ghosh, Belonia’s Arun Chandr Bhaumik, and Ambasa’s Parimal Devbarma.
Minister Ramprasad Pal’s ticket is on hold.
BJP coordinator for northeast Sambit Patra said the party would win a full majority in the state riding on Narendra Modi-led development wave signalled by 53 per cent rural houses getting potable water as against the 3 per cent before 2014; 3.5 lakh people getting PM housing, and the central assistance to the state rising from Rs 3,500 crore before 2014 to Rs 14,000 crore now.
The BJP had won 36 of the state’s 60 seats in 2018, its ally IPFT 8, CPM 15 and Congress 1.
The BJP and IPFT had ended the 25-year-old CPM rule in Tripura in 2018.
Patra said the remaining 12 seats would be announced soon.
It’s unclear if the BJP would leave some seats for IPFT with the alliance yet to be formalised.
