Agartala, Jan. 17 (PTI): The first round of talks for an electoral alliance between BJP and tribal IPFT for the Tripura assembly election was held here today where it was decided that a joint statement would be signed before seat sharing.
Assam BJP leader and chairman of North East Democratic Alliance(NEDA), Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the joint statement would contain issues like adressing of socio-economic, socio-cultural and linguistic problems of the tribals of Tripura.
The NEDA is a political coalition formed in 2016 by BJP along with regional political parties like Naga People’s Front, Sikkim Democratic Front, People’s Party of Arunachal, Asom Gana Parishad and Bodoland People’s Front in northeast India.
Sarma, who is also the BJP election in-charge of Tripura, told a news conference that talks would be held in Guwahati tomorrow on preparation of the statement.
The statement would be signed by the president of Tripura unit of BJP, Biplab Kumar Deb and IPFT president N C Debbarma and then discussion on seat sharing would be started.
“We hope to finalise the entire deal within two to three days and then the statement would be made public,” he said.
BJP s party machinery was fully geared up to face the election in all the 60 assembly constituencies and the party was confident about its massive victory and defeat of CPI-M, which ruled Tripura for the last 25 years.
We hope that the Election Commission will declare the poll in the state within two to three days and after declaration of the election our workers and leaders in every booth would take the pledge for BJP’s victory and start intensive work for it,” Sarma said.
He alleged that the ruling CPI-M in Tripura had forced 1.5 lac state government employee to pay subscription of Rs 3000 on an average and collected Rs 4.5 crore which is tantamount to extortion. BJP would lodge a complaint to the EC for taking appropriate actions against the left party.
“If any employee says that he paid the subscription voluntarily then that too it is illegal because government employee cannot subscribe to any political party,” Sarma said.
He claimed that on an average in every constituency in Tripura there are 1500 false, fake or dead voters even after publication of the final voters list. “We demand that EC for correction of the voter list”.
