Agartala, Feb. 16: The beleaguered Congress has secured a poor fourth spot, even losing their security deposit, in the byelection to the Amarpur Assembly constituency.
The counting of votes for the byelection, which was held on February 13, was held today.
The process began at 8am and soon CPM candidate Parimal Debnath, who is also the party's subdivisional secretary, carved out an unassailable lead. As the counting progressed, the lead widened and the CPM candidate finally won the seat by 10,604 votes over his BJP rival.
The BJP, which had put up former RSP leader Ranjit Das as candidate, put up a creditable show by securing second position with 9,751 votes.
Interestingly, the regional IPFT, which did not strike any alliance with any other mainstream party, came third with 1,728 votes. As anticipated, Congress candidate Chanchal De, who did not receive any help from state party leaders, ended up with only 1,231 votes.
CPM office secretary Rakhal Mazumder congratulated the 38,371-strong electorate of Amarpur for reaffirming their support to the party. "We knew we would win but still the margin of victory is really satisfactory for us because in the 2013 Assembly polls we had won the seat by only 4,201 votes. The result also shows that our support base among tribal voters is intact and it has in fact grown," Mazumder said.
He, however, expressed concern over the growth of the BJP in Tripura. "We will now make an organisational move to prevent the growth of the BJP," Mazumder said, refusing to comment on the plight of the Congress.
BJP state president Biplab Deb said the party had expected to perform better in the byelection but he belied the BJP would pip the CPM in the 2018 Asssembly polls.
But a pall of gloom has descended on the Congress camp.
"This was more or less known that Congress would lose the security deposit but the drastic fall in the vote share is a matter of concern. It will be difficult to reverse the trend as there is hardly any support from the central leadership," said Tapas De, former MLA and Congress spokesperson.
