As senior leaders of the BJP including party chief J P Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and others met here a day ago and whetted the list of candidates for the upcoming Tripura assembly elections, the Central Election Committee (CEC) of the BJP met on Friday evening and finalised the list. Thursday’s meeting was also attended by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, BJP's state incharge Mahesh Sharma , Rajya Sabha MP and former state CM Biplab Deb and North Eastern States Convenor Sambit Patra.
Earlier in the day, BJP's Tripura unit core group members met at party leader and northeast in-charge Patra's residence.
All members of the CEC on Friday attended the meeting at the BJP headquarters and also considered seat allocation with the alliance partners, if any , sources said.
The 60-member Tripura Assembly will go to polls on February 16. The last date for filling nominations is January 30. The counting of votes will be taken up on March 2.
Facing anti-incumbency, the BJP has a major challenge from Congress-Left alliance as well as from resurgent Trinamool Congress.
In 2018, the BJP formed the government for the first time in Tripura, ending the 20-year run of the CPI(M).
Like in Gujarat and Uttarakhand, the BJP leadership had, last year, changed Chief Minister of Tripura, replacing Biplab Dev with Saha who was a congress member before joining the saffron party.