CPI-M candidate wins Tripura seat with record margin

 Ruling CPI-M candidate Pravat Chowdhury Tuesday won the Manu assembly seat in southern Tripura, defeating his nearest Congress rival Mailafru Mog by a record margin of around 16,000 votes, officials here said.

The returning officer to the Manu assembly by-poll, Rajib Datta told IANS that the CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) candidate Chowdhury, a former agriculture department official, secured 21,759 votes while his nearest Congress nominee Mailafru Mog got 5,788 votes. The by-election was held Saturday.

In the last assembly elections in February last year, CPI-M candidate and former forest, industries and rural development minister Jitendra Choudhury won the seat by a margin of 6,896 votes.

The bypoll in the tribal reserve assembly constituency was necessitated after Jitendra Chaudhury, who won the seat five times on the CPI-M ticket, was elected to the lok Sabha from the Tripura East constituency.

The Bharatiya Janata Party candidate managed 971 votes in last year's elections and this time party nominee Nirmal Kumar Tripura increased its votes tally to 1,550 votes.

Among the six candidates who contested the bypoll, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee's Trinamool Congress candidate Angthai Mog bagged 1,110 votes.

Candidates of two tribal-based local parties, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura's Kirti Mohan Tripura and the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura's Mithunjoy Tripura got 432 and 3018 votes respectively.

The None Of The Above (NOTA) provision was used by 374 voters. The CPI-M activists and local leaders immediately after the declaration of results brought out a rally with their winning candidate Pravat Chowdhury.