On January 27, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Central Election Committee (CEC) to finalize tickets for the upcoming Tripura Assembly elections.
On January 26, senior BJP figures, including party chairman JP Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah met in New Delhi to decide on the list of candidates for the upcoming assembly elections of Tripura. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, BJP State Charge Mahesh Sharma and Rajya Sabha MP Biplab Deb also attended the meeting.
The core group of the BJP’s Tripura unit had a meeting on January 26 at the home of Sambit Patra, the head of the party’s northeast. At a meeting of its central electoral committee on January 27, the BJP will choose its candidates for the Tripura legislative elections.
Elections for the 60-member Tripura assembly are scheduled for February 16. Nominations must be submitted by January 30. The vote count will be discussed on March 2. In Tripura, the BJP first took over as head of state of the state in 2018, ending the 20-year reign of the CPI(M).
The Tripura assembly elections are less than a month away, therefore the next moves of Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barma’s TIPRA Motha, the newest political player in the state, are being closely watched.
Deb Barma has kept her cards close to her chest and insisted she will only side with a party that agrees to her demand for a separate Tipraland state for indigenous groups in writing. This is despite the fact that he is being persecuted by all the major players in the state, from the ruling BJP to the CPI(M)-Congress alliance.
Deb Barma has been in talks with the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), a major force in tribal politics in the state and an ally of the BJP, for the past few weeks. He has called for the IPFT to combine with his party to ensure the “survival and existence of Tiprasa”. The IPFT has chosen to back the royal scion in the upcoming elections, considering the meetings “fruitful”.