Agartala, Dec. 14: The winds of political change sweeping the CPM led Left Front off its feet in West Bengal and Kerala seems to have stopped short of the Left bastion in Tripura.
The Left Front captured 13 of the 15 nagar panchayats, brushing out Opposition Congress in five of them and also retained hold over Agartala Municipal Council by winning 27 seats of the 35 wards of municipal council elections.
For the beleaguered Congress, the results were better than what they had achieved in last civic polls of 2005.
The party wrested control over the Sabroom nagar panchayat in South Tripura district by a narrow 5-4 margin and over Ambassa nagar panchayat by a 7-4 margin.
In the last civic polls of 2005, the Congress had failed to capture a single panchayat and secured only five of the 35 wards of the municipal body.
As counting of votes from electronic voting machines began on schedule at 8am today, early trends showed Left Front surging ahead in the nagar panchayats except in Sabroom and Ambassa.
The Front made a clean sweep over Congress in Khowai, Ranir Bazar, Sonamura, Belonia and newly created Santir Bazar nagar panchayats where the Opposition failed to win a single seat.
However, as expected there were close contests at Dharmanagar nagar panchayat in North Tripura district and Bishalgarh nagar panchayat in West Tripura district.
In Dharmanagar, the Left Front captured the civic body by a 12-7 margin while in Bishalgarh the Front’s victory margin was 8-5. Sources in the state election commission said in several wards in nagar panchayats results had been decided by narrow margins.
“In ward 10 of Kamalpur nagar panchayat, the victory margin of the CPM candidate was only 10 votes while in seven of the 14 wards of Teliamura nagar panchayat the victory margin varied between 25 and 50 votes. In the municipal polls, ward 25 has been decided by only 9 votes while ward 16 has gone to the Congress by a margin of only 19 votes,” said a source in the state election commission.
Sources added there was tension in Bishalgarh nagar panchayat area as unruly Congress workers burst crackers after the party had won the first three seats but when the CPM finally captured the nagar panchayat area the Opposition party supporters went on a spree of retaliatory attacks.
“The counting remained unaffected by the violence and tension outside and police intervened strongly to prevent escalation of the violence,” sources said.
Senior CPM leader GautamDas who is also the editor of the party organ Daily Desher Katha described the outcome of civic polls as “a positive mandate in favour of the Left forces”.
“At a time when a countrywide canard is on against the Left forces in context to poll results in West Bengal and Kerala this decisive mandate of the people in favour of the Left Front indicate positive vibes. This is a positive verdict on the prevailing peace, development and policies of the Left Front government in Tripura and is significant in many ways,” Das said.He attributed the Left defeat in Sabroom and Ambassa nagar panchayats to “organisation weakness”, adding that the party would initiate measures to strengthen the organisation.
The PCC president Surajit Dutta said he “humbly and respectfully accepted the verdict of the people” though, he alleged, the election process had been marred by malpractices of the CPM in many forms in the run-up to the poll as well as on the day of the poll.
“Our results this year have been far better compared to the last elections held in 2005 but we could have done better with a stronger organisation and without the conventional malpractices of the CPM. We will now concentrate on improving our organisational strength all over the state, keeping the 2013 assembly polls in view,” said Dutta.
