Campaigning for Tripura Assembly elections ends

Campaign for the Tripura Legislative Assembly elections concluded on Friday evening. Election for the 60-member Tripura Assembly will be held on February 18 and results would be announced on March 3. A total of 320 nominations from different political parties and independent candidates have been filed for the February 18 Assembly elections in Tripura.Of them, nominations of 307 candidates were found valid after a scrutiny.

It's a battle royale between incumbent chief minister Manik Sarkar and Team Modi in the upcoming Tripura Assembly elections. The resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using all its manpower and might to win the Tripura elections by unseating the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M))-led Left Front government which is in power in the state since 1993. It's a big challenge to win elections for any party in the northeastern state that is known to be a strong fort of the Left. In fact, Tripura is the last two bastions (the other one is Kerala) where the Left is in power, otherwise the communist parties have almost lost their grounds across the country.

The BJP has been steadily increasing its influence in Tripura since it came to power at the Centre in 2014. The saffron party is working at the grassroots level and developing its cadre base. In the past, elections in the northeastern state were all about contest between the CPI (M)-led Left Front and the Congress. The Congress which till the last Assembly elections in 2013 was the only contender against the ruling Left Front government, this time seems to have gone missing. In the last elections, the Congress bagged 10 seats and rest was won by the Left Front in the 60-member Tripura Assembly.