Agartala, September 10: With Tripura’s Village Committee elections less than three weeks away, the BJP and Tipra Motha Party have intensified efforts to iron out differences over seat distribution and avoid clashes between their nominees.
Senior leaders of the two parties met on Thursday and indicated that the remaining issues would be settled by Friday. In constituencies where candidates of both alliance partners have already filed nomination papers, one of them is expected to withdraw to facilitate a common NDA candidate.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ratan Lal Nath said the two sides had already agreed on nearly 80 per cent of the seats, while negotiations were continuing over the remaining constituencies.
Nath said the filing of nominations by candidates from both parties in some areas was largely the result of the delay in reaching a final seat-sharing arrangement and the limited time available during the nomination process. The alliance understanding, he said, also took time to reach party workers at the grassroots.
He said local leaders were now aware of the state-level arrangement and would coordinate the withdrawal of duplicate nominations.
Nath described the September 28 Village Committee elections as a significant exercise, pointing out that the large number of seats required extensive discussions before the formula could be finalised.
He said the results of the 2026 TTAADC elections had been considered while deciding the distribution of Village Committee seats between BJP and Tipra Motha.
Tipra Motha MLA Ranjit Debbarma said feedback from block-level leaders had been collected and would be used to settle the outstanding issues. He said the final seat numbers could still change but stressed that the allies would not allow multiple NDA candidates to remain in the fray in the same constituency.
BJP Tripura Pradesh president Abhishek Debroy said the NDA was confident of securing a decisive victory in the elections.
The negotiations primarily involved BJP and Tipra Motha, while NDA partner IPFT remained absent. Debroy said IPFT continued to be an integral part of the alliance and that its electoral arrangement had already been settled.
Debroy rejected opposition allegations that CPI(M) and Congress candidates were facing threats or obstruction, accusing the parties of attempting to create a “false narrative” ahead of the polls.
He also defended the decision of BJP and Tipra Motha to contest the TTAADC elections separately earlier this year, saying both were independent parties and had followed their respective electoral strategies at the time. Their leadership had now decided to fight the Village Committee polls together, he said.
Nath described the earlier separate contest as an “electoral tactic”, maintaining that the two parties had remained allies since 2024 and continued to run the state government together.
