NEW DELHI, July 6
Eyeing the forthcoming three-tier panchayat polls slated for August, the opposition Congress party has started preparations to achieve good results amidst alleged violence perpetrated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cadres.
The party held a crucial meeting on Saturday at the Students’ Health Home in Agartala. The meeting included state Congress president Ashish Kumar Saha, Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and former minister Sudip Roy Barman, party observers, district presidents, and other frontal wing leaders to discuss strategies for the three-tier panchayat polls. Raising allegations of violence, including assault on opposition candidates and damaging vehicles in the last panchayat poll, Congress president Ashish Kumar Saha stated that they had previously sought the state Election Commission’s approval to introduce an online nomination submission process. “We submitted a memorandum to the state Election Commission to allow nomination submission through online mode. We raised the matter during an all-party meeting. It’s because opposition party candidates could not file their nominations in many of the administrative blocks during the 2019 panchayat poll. But we haven’t received any reply so far,” said Saha after the meeting. He noted that 86 percent of opposition candidates could not file nominations in the last panchayat poll, which benefitted the ruling saffron party. He further alleged that the remaining 14 per cent of candidates were prevented from joining campaigns, leading to the ruling party securing 94 percent of the panchayats. Additionally, he claimed that no social audit of the panchayats has been conducted in the past three years. On this issue, Roy Barman said, “It’s a local body election. The grassroots-level leaders and workers in the panchayats will decide whether they will forge an alliance with CPI(M). From our side, we stated that the party should contest on its own.
People want a healthy environment to develop at the panchayat level against corruption. We hope they can elect proper representatives in the panchayat polls this time.” He also asked local leaders to field candidates based on the party’s organizational strength.
“We asked them to work based on the situation. We expect good candidates and results in some of the RD blocks,” Sudip Roy Barman said. Tripura is likely to hold panchayat elections by the end of July or the first week of August, though the schedule is yet to be finalized, State Election Commissioner S. Chaudhuri said today. The poll will be held in 6,370 gram panchayat seats, followed by 423 seats in 35 panchayat samitis, and 116 seats in eight zilla parishads.
