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Lok Sabha polls: BJP, Congress nominees file nominations from Tripura
Elections to the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat and by-poll to the Ramnagar assembly constituency will be held on April 19
Agartala: Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) candidate and former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Wednesday filed nomination papers as a party candidate from the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat.
Deb submitted his nomination papers to West district magistrate and returning officer Vishal Kumar.
Present at the occasion were chief minister Dr Manik Saha, Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini, former chief minister of Haryana Manohar Lal Kattar, BJP state president Rajib Bhattacharjee, BJP’s new alliance partner TIPRA Motha founder Pradyot Kishore Debbarma and others.
“Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi set a target of 370 seats for the BJP alone. But I think it may cross the previous records. I am happy to see party flags of TIPRA Motha, IPFT [ Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura] are being waved together with BJP”, CM Saha said.
Besides Deb, BJP nominee Dipak Majumder also filed his nomination papers for the by-election to the Ramnagar assembly constituency.
The nomination papers would be scrutinized on March 28 while the candidates could withdraw their papers by March 30. Elections to the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat and by-poll to the Ramnagar assembly constituency will be held on April 19.
After spending 16 years in Delhi, Biplab Deb returned to Tripura in 2015 as in-charge of BJP’s Mahajansampark Abhiyan barely three years before the state’s assembly polls.
A year later, he became the BJP state president and in 2018, he came to power in the state for the first time in alliance with a regional indigenous political party Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT). In 2022, he resigned as the chief minister and was later elected as the lone Rajya Sabha MP from Tripura.
Congress state president Ashish Kumar Saha also filed his nomination papers on Wednesday as the INDIA bloc candidate for the Lok Sabha.
After filing nominations, he said that the contest is not about who comes to power, it is to ascertain whether a constitution and democracy would prevail or not.
“People are not happy due to inflation, and unemployment. People will vote on these issues”, said Saha.
He further added that former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was supposed to join the campaign for INDIA alliance candidates in the state, but was denied permission by the government.
“BJP got scared after hearing that Kanhaiya Kumar will join the campaign here. But we shall surely bring him here for the campaign”, said Saha.
Ashish won the assembly polls in 2013 on a Congress ticket and later switched over to the Trinamool Congress in 2016, and a year later, he moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and won assembly polls in 2018.
However, he resigned as the legislator ahead of the 2023 assembly polls and rejoined the Congress party. Ashish contested the last assembly polls from Bardowali’s seat against incumbent chief minister Manik Saha but lost.
Last year, he was elected as the chief of the Tripura Congress Pradesh Committee replacing Birajit Sinha.
