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Left Front sweeps Tripura polls

Sushanta Talukdar

Congress emerges single largest party in hung Meghalaya Assembly

— Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

The victor: Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar with supporters at Sonamura on Friday after the CPI(M) won a landslide in the Assembly elections.

Guwahati: The ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front on Friday swept the polls in Tripura and retained power for the fourth consecutive term with a landslide victory, winning 49 of the 60 Assembly seats. The Congress emerged as the single largest party in Meghalaya, where the results threw up another hung Assembly .

In Meghalaya the Congress secured 25 seats out of the 59 for which elections were held and results declared. Polling in Baghmara will be held on March 22.

In Tripura, the Left Front gained a three-fourths majority and increased its tally from the 41 seats it won in 2003. The CPI (M) on its own won 46 seats. Its partners, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Communist Party of India, won two seats and one seat respectively.

The Left Front wrested eight seats from the opposition Congress-Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT).

The tally of the Congress-INPT alliance stood reduced to 11 from 19 in 2003. The Congress won 10 seats — three less than the 13 it got in the last polls, while the INPT won only one seat against six last time.

The third ally of the Congress — the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS) — failed to win a single seat.

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar was re-elected from Dhanpur, while Meghalaya Chief Minister D.D. Lapang was re-elected from Nongpoh.

Mr. Sarkar described the Left Front’s victory as a “massive, positive mandate for peace, stability and development.”

He told The Hindu over phone that the priority of the sixth Left Front government, to be installed in two or three days, would be to “upgrade the standard of living of the people and alleviate the condition of people living below the poverty line, besides carrying forward the agenda of peace, stability and development.”

NCP gets 14 seats

In Meghalaya, the main rival of the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) secured 14 seats. The former Lok Sabha Speaker, Purno Agitok Sangma, who had projected himself as the chief ministerial candidate, won from Tura.

The regional parties together won 14 seats. The United Democratic Party (UDP) won 11, the Hill State People’s Democratic Party (HSPDP) won two, and the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement (KHNAM) one. Independents won five seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party won only one seat this time against two it won last time.

However, another regional party — the Meghalaya Democratic Party (MDP), which won four seats in the 2003 polls, drew a blank.

All these four parties were constituents of the Congress-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance coalition , but fought against the Congress in this election.

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