Agartala: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday issued a formal notification for the election of 13th Tripura assembly on February 16 and the nomination process has begun, and will continue till January 30.
As per the notification, scrutiny will be held on January 31, and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is February 2.
The counting of the votes will be done together on March 2 in Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland in their respective states, said Chief Electoral Officer Kiran Gitte.
There are 28,13,478 voters—14,14,576 males, 13,98,825 females, and 77 third genders in the final electoral roll of Tripura, where service voters were enrolled at 10,344. There are 38,039 voters in 80+ age groups and 679 voters in above 100+ age groups, Gitte said.
He added that as many as 65,044 voters have been registered between the ages of 18 and 19, of which 34,704 are male, 30,328 are female, and 12 are of the third gender.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Dr. Manik Saha told the media that the candidate selection process is underway and that the party will announce the names of candidates to the parliamentary board very soon.
“There are so many procedures in terms of selecting candidates in the BJP, and this parliamentary board is the last place where the final decision would be taken. We will declare the candidate list well ahead of schedule,”, he said.
On alliance, CM claimed that IPFT is still BJP’s alliance partner, and that the door is always open for anyone who wants to form an alliance with BJP, but he declined to comment on the recent communication between IPFT president and cooperation minister in his cabinet, Prem Kumar Reang, and TIPRA Motha supremo Pradyot Kishore Debbarman.
“In the coming two days, something new may happen. However, the BJP alone is sufficient, so we are not concerned about the alliance.We are alone and powerful,” said Saha, calling the CPIM and Congress alliance ‘unholy.’
