AGARTALA, Sept 4 - The Tripura Election Commission today issued the notification for holding the Panchayat by-elections in the State. In February, the State had gone to a high-voltage Assembly election in which the BJP-IPFT combine scored a stunning victory and ended the 25-year-old Left rule in the State.
As per the poll schedule, filing of nomination papers will be allowed from September 4 to 11. Scrutiny will be conducted on September 12 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination papers will be September 14. The elections will be held on September 30, while the counting will take place on October 3.
There are 3,386 seats in the Gram Panchayats, Panchayat Samitis and Nagar Panchayats. The State election machinery comprising the DMs and BDOs have already geared up to conduct free and fair polls.
All the three major political parties � BJP, CPI(M) and Congress � have already announced their respective decisions to contest the rural by-polls.
�We are going to announce candidates for the forthcoming by-elections shortly. The party will seek votes on the basis of the Government�s performance during the last six months,� said BJP general secretary Rajib Bhattacharjee.
PCC president Birajit Sinha said the Congress would contest all the seats for the three-tier panchayats.
�The party will finalise the list of candidates for all vacant seats of the three-tier Panchayat system. We want the Government to provide adequate security measures to ensure free and fair elections,� he told reporters.
Interestingly, no tribal party � the IPFT or the INPT � is going to participate in the forthcoming Panchayat elections.
According to political analysts, the Panchayat by-elections will be an acid test for all the three major political parties before going for the Lok Sabha elections, slated for early next year.
