AGARTALA, March 16: Tripura BJP president Rajib Bhattacharjee on Sunday said that the ruling party will contest the elections to the village committees of TTAADC along with its allies, the Tipra Motha Party (TMP) and the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT).
The BJP and TMP had fought the state assembly elections in 2023 separately but a year later, the Tipra Motha Party joined the BJP-led coalition government.
“We believe in coalition politics… we will fight the elections to the village committees under the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTADC) collectively after consultation with our two allies, TMP and IPFT,” Bhattacharjee told reporters here.
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The TTAADC, constituted under the Sixth Schedule, has 587 village committees (akin to panchayats) for which elections were supposed to take place in February 2021. The schedule of the polls is yet to be announced.
Bhattacharjee said the BJP, in association with Janajati Morcha, the tribal wing of the ruling party, has initiated highlighting the good work of the BJP-led coalition government for the welfare of the indigenous people.
“Today, we organised a state-level programme – ‘Empowering Janajati, Empowering Tripura’ — here to highlight the good work done by the BJP-led government in the last seven years. Such programmes will be held in district and block levels as well,” he said.
Bhattacharjee said the BJP-led government has been spending more development funds in the tribal-dominated blocks than in non-tribal blocks to speed up development activities such as road construction, drinking water supply, housing and livelihood.
“The 23-year-old Bru issue has been solved permanently by rehabilitating the internally displaced families in the state during the BJP rule. Besides, as many as 18 Eklavya Model Residential Schools have been sanctioned for providing proper education to tribal students,” he added.
In response to a petition filed by the Tipra Motha Party for holding village committee elections at the earliest, the Tripura High Court had last year directed the State Election Commission (SEC) to conduct the polls by December 2024.
Although the five-year tenure of the village committees expired in February 2021, the elections could not be held due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The State Election Commission later initiated delimitation of the village committees, further delaying the polls. (PTI)
