Pratima Bhoumik, a Union minister from Dhanpur, was named to the BJP’s first list of 48 candidates for the Tripura Assembly elections on Saturday.
According to Rajib Bhattacharjee, the party’s state president, who arrived in the state late Friday night from New Delhi with other senior leaders, the party, which is now in control in the northeastern state, will run in the upcoming elections alone and file nominations for all 60 seats.
Following a meeting between the parliamentary committee and the central election committee of the BJP, according to Bhattacharjee, the list was finalised. The candidates for the BJP are drawn from a variety of committees, including those representing women, minorities, scheduled castes, tribes, and OBCs.
Chief Minister Manik Saha has been selected as the BJP’s candidate from Town Bordowali. Bhoumik serves as a Union Minister in the Center’s BJP-led administration. She represents Tripura as an MP. After defeating the CPI(M), which had dominated the state for the previous 25 years in a row, the BJP took office in the state for the first time in 2018.
For a pre-election alliance, which has now been ruled out, the BJP’s senior leadership was in talks with TIPRA, a regional party created by former Congress politician and royal scion Pradyot Deb Barman. Bhattacharjee asserted that negotiations with the alliance partner IPFT are still ongoing.
In response to former Trinamool state president Subal Bhowmik and CPI(M) MLA Moboshar Ali joining the BJP, he claimed they realised the state’s residents could not support the Congress-CPI(M) coalition and that many more were in contact with the BJP.
This time, the CPI(M) is running in the state elections alongside the Congress. Chief Minister Manik Saha, Union Minister Pratima Bhowmik, Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma, former Chief Minister and MP Biplab Kumar Deb, organisation secretary Phanindranath Sharma, and BJP Tripura election chief Dr Mahesh Sharma are among the other leaders who flew back from New Delhi on Friday in a chartered flight.
With 43.59% of the vote share in the 2018 Assembly elections, the BJP won a majority of seats (36) and formed the government, with Biplab Kumar Deb serving as Chief Minister. Despite winning 44.35% of the vote share, the previous ruling Left Front alliance only managed to secure 16 seats.
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