BJP wins by-polls in Tripura | AT Photo
Agartala, Sept 8: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Tripura secured victories in Dhanpur and Boxanagar Assembly constituencies with impressive margins on Friday.
Both the seats that went for polls on September 5, 2023, last witnessed a direct electoral battle between arch rivals BJP and CPIM.
With this win the ruling party has improved its tally in the state assembly from 31 to 33. BJP candidate from Boxanagar Tofajjal Hossain who faced a defeat in the 2023 general elections to the state Assembly offered an electoral drubbing to his rival candidate Mijan Hossain by over 30,000 votes. Tofajjal received 33,849 votes while Mijan could barely manage to get 3,718 votes.
Boxanagar is always considered to be a citadel of the Left parties but the polls proved that the opposition's support base in the Minority Muslim dominated constituency was eroding fast.
Death of veteran CPIM leader Samsul Haque, who was elected in the March elections, further weakened the party's grip on that particular area.
Unlike Boxanagar, voters of Dhanpur reposed their faith in the BJP for the second time in a row within six months. Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Pratima Bhoumik was the first non-Left MLA to be elected from the constituency in the last sixty years. Despite her great performance, Bhoumik had to tender her resignation for constitutional obligations. She continued to serve as an MP from West Tripura paving the way for the by-polls.
This time, Bhoumik's close confidante Bindu Debnath was pitted against CPIM's Kaushik Chanda. Debnath fought the polls successfully to defeat Chanda even with a larger margin of votes.
The opposition CPIM, on the other hand, boycotted the counting, raising allegations of massive rigging. The party that ruled the state for 25 years now left with only ten MLAs in the state assembly.