The Election Commission on Wednesday fixed February 16 as the date for the Tripura Assembly polls and February 27 for the elections to the Nagaland and Meghalaya Assemblies, the first tranche of Assembly elections to be held in 2023. The counting of votes will be held on March 2.
The tenures of the three Assemblies, with 60 seats each, end on March 12, 15 and 22, respectively. These three northeastern States will kick-start the election season in 2023 and will be followed by Assembly polls in Karnataka, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana.
Together, they will set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when India will vote to elect its new Government.
“All the constituencies of Tripura will vote in a single phase on February 16. Meghalaya and Nagaland will vote on February 27. The election results of these States will be declared on March 2,” Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said while addressing a Press conference.
In Tripura, the date of the issue of gazette notification is January 21 and the last date for filing nominations is January 30. The last date for the withdrawal of candidatures is on February 2. In Meghalaya and Nagaland, the gazette notification will be issued on January 31. The date for filing nominations is February 7.
The CEC said polling dates have been fixed keeping in mind the exam season. The Commission held a series of meetings with political parties and officials from the administration from January 11 to 15. He said that women’s participation in the voting process has always been high in all these three states.
Sharing details of voters, CEC said, “There are 2.28 lakh voters who have been added in the three states. 97,000 voters are above the age of 80 and 31,700 voters are with physical disabilities. Voters above the age of 1oo are 2600.”
Tripura is ruled by the BJP, while the saffron party is part of the ruling coalition in Meghalaya and Nagaland. By winning Tripura in 2018 , the BJP ended the long Left rule and Biplab Deb became the Chief Minister. But the party had to remove him in May 2022 over performance issues and made Dr Manik Saha the new Chief Minister. Saha also faces the challenge of ironing out the differences growing within the state unit. Besides, the BJP’s relationship with its key ally -- tribal outfit Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) – is on the rocks.
Bypoll to the Lakshadweep Lok Sabha seat, which was vacated following the disqualification of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) member Mohammed Faizal after his conviction in a criminal case, will be held on February 27, along with by-elections to six Assembly seats spread over five states. All the bypolls will take place along with the Assembly polls in Meghalaya and Nagaland. According to the Election Commission, the counting of votes will be taken up on March 2, the day the results of the Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland Assembly polls are scheduled to be announced. The Tripura Assembly polls will be held on February 16.
While two bypolls will take place in Maharashtra (the Kasba Peth and Chinchwad seats), one bypoll each will be held in Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bangal and Tamil Nadu, the EC said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Lumla seat in Arunachal Pradesh fell vacant following the death of incumbent MLA Jambey Tashi. The Ramgarh seat in Jharkhand was vacated after the disqualification of Mamta Devi. The Erode (East) seat in Tamil Nadu was vacated after the death of incumbent MLA E Thirumahan Everaa. West Bengal’s Sagardighi Assembly seat fell vacant after the death of incumbent MLA Subrata Saha. The death of Congress MP from Jalandhar Santokh Singh was not “reported” to the EC by the Lok Sabha secretariat. Hence, bypoll to the parliamentary seat was not announced on Wednesday, sources later explained.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently visited the state to sort these issues out and flagged off Jana Vishwas Yatra to mobilise support for the party.
The Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are expected to join hands to take on the BJP in Tripura, where the Left ruled for 25 years while the Congress was its main rival. The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) is also making a determined bid to prove its clout outside West Bengal by contesting these polls.
The Congress emerged as the largest party in the Meghalaya assembly election in 2018, but its tally of 21 seats fell short of the halfway mark in the 60-member legislature.The BJP supported the NPP to form the government in the state. Conrad Sangma became the chief minister. Recently, fissures surfaced between the NPP and the BJP. In a spur-of-the-moment reaction, Sangma had said his party would go it alone on all the seats in 2023. Recently, two MLAs resigned from the NPP and joined the saffron party. The BJP in 2018 had won only two seats. The party aims to lead the coalition Government this time.
In Nagaland, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), and the BJP, formed ahead of the 2018 polls. There is no Opposition in Nagaland. 21 NPF MLAs joined the UDA. In 2018, the NPF got 26 seats, the NDPP 18, the BJP 12, the NPP 2, the JDU 1 and one is Independent.