2018 Tripura Assembly Election Sunday Feb 18,2018 - Counting of Votes and Results Today Saturday March 03,2018

 

Exit polls have predicted that the BJP would dethrone the 25-year-old Left Front government in Tripura and consolidate its position in the other two states.

Though the strength of Tripura assembly is 60, voting was held for 59 constituencies. Voting in the Charilam (reserved for tribals) has been deferred to March 12 after the death of a CPM candidate. 

State minister and CPM candidate Khagendra Jamataia passed away on the eve of results on Friday March 02,2018, but counting is being held in his Krishnapur constituency as per schedule.

The BJP has come back strongly to catch-up to the CPM in Tripura. Both parties are neck-and-neck in the fight, and both their CM candidates, Manik Sarkar and Biplab Kumar Deb, are leading in their respective constituencies

Of the 59 Assembly seats, the BJP and its ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) bagged 43. The BJP won 35 seats and the IPFT won eight. 

 

The CPM could get only 16 seats and the Congress drew a blank. This marks the end of Manik Sarkar's two decades as Tripura chief minister.

For the ruling CPM, the results came as a shocker

Some of the big losers of the CPM are the outgoing deputy speaker of state Assembly Pabitra Kar, Power Minister Manik Dey, Tribal Welfare Minister Aghore Debbarma and Forests Minister Naresh Jamatia.

The CPM members shied away from speaking with the media, but issued a statement conceding defeat and contending that the BJP, apart from other factors, utilised massive deployment of money and other resources to influence the elections

Tripura has been among the Left Front's longstanding bastions, which is why its drubbing at the hands of the BJP-IPFT alliance marks the beginning of a new chapter in the state's polity. In the state Assembly elections since 1983, the BJP had never polled more than 2 percent votes, except in 1998 when it polled 5.87 percent votes.

The Congress, which had won 10 seats and 36.53 percent votes in the last Assembly polls, got a mere 1.8 percent of votes and could not win a single seat.