Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seeking a mandate to make Tripura a prosperous state in the next five years. In an exclusive interview with news agency ANI, the home minister exuded confidence in the saffron party achieving a full majority in the upcoming Tripura assembly elections.
"We will increase our seats and also our vote share in Tripura," Amit Shah said. Shah said the Congress and CPI-M joining hands shows that they are not in a position to defeat the BJP on their own."The Congress and the Communist party have come together as they have accepted that they can't defeat the BJP alone. We will form a government with a full majority in the state," he said.Responding to questions about a possible hung assembly in Tripura, the union home minister said that the constituencies in the state are small."The BJP would have crossed the majority mark before 12 pm on the counting day," Shah told ANI.
The polling for the Tripura Assembly election is underway amid tight security. Arch rivals, Congress and CPI-M have joined hands to dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from power in the northeastern state. In this triangular contest, the ruling BJP and its alliance partner Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) are pitted against the Left-Congress alliance and TIPRA Motha, the newest regional party in the state. The BJP is contesting on 55 seats and its ally on six seats as both parties have fielded their candidates from the Ampinagar constituency. The Left – which includes the CPM, Forward Bloc, Communist Party of India ( CPI) and Revolutionary Socialist Party ( RSP) – is contesting on 47 seats while Congress on 13 seats. The TIPRA Motha, headed by royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, is contesting on 42 seats.