Tripura: Opposition demands EC to deploy sufficient armed forces during election

The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Tripura on January 7 headed by Chief Electoral Officer, Kiran Gitte convened an all political party meeting in which the opposition political parties raised grave concern over the possibilities of peaceful election and demanded to deploy sufficient central armed paramilitary forces (CAPF).

As per reports, various important issues like Final Publication of Electoral Roll, launching of ‘Mission Zero Poll Violence’, upcoming activities like making of Rangoli at every household on the eve of Poush Sankranti as a part of SVEEP campaign, upcoming visit of the Election Commission of India to Tripura on 11th & 12th January, 2023 have been discussed.

“All the representatives of political parties present in the meeting have appreciated the initiatives taken by the Chief Electoral Officer, Tripura to ensure free, fair and violence free election but urged for more efforts from the civil as well as Police administration. CEO Tripura noted the concerns expressed by all political parties and promised to take suitable action for ensuring free, fair and transparent Assembly Elections. It has been informed that the meeting of the Election Commission of India with the political parties will be held on 11th January soon after the arrival of the Commission to Tripura”, the press release reads.

While, CPIM state committee secretary Jitendra Chowdhury hailed the Election Commission and CEO Tripura for organising the meeting.

“Not only us but from TMC, Congress, TIPRA Motha have raised similar concern of peaceful election. From our point of view we have categorically demanded deployment of paramilitary forces, sensitization of people in the presence of the high officials. We also told that since day one of the government many offices of opposition political parties were forcefully captured, demolished or destroyed but now if the free and fair election need to be conducted then the key office of the political parties have to be reopened and provided the list. I have also raised issues of providing permission to opposition political parties”, he said.
Chowdhury also said that from CPIM they have also mentioned about the incidents of bye-elections.

“In the meeting the BJP representative tried to divert the meeting and we also raised obstruction against him and so he kept mum. We have the trust our CEO and confident that there will be violence free election Tripura this time”, he added.

Subrata Datta, member and spokesperson of Pradesh Congress Committee said, “We told CEO that they have launched zero poll violence in the state and soon after announcement, one party office of Congress at Udaipur came under attack, many workers also came under attack. We had information that CAPF would be deployed only for ST reserved seats so we have demanded to deploy all the CAPF across the state and requested for peaceful and violence Free State”.

Datta said during the meeting we demanded investigation on voter list as many Bangladeshi voters and underage voters were enrolled
Secretary of TMC, Amit Kumar Saha has also raised the demand of peaceful election and proper deployment of security across the state. 
While BJP’s Balai Goswami said, “We have no objection on decisions of CEO and ECI for holding free and fair election. But we don’t want previous culture like conducting poll amidst heavy deployment of CAPF. We want free and fair election”.