Tripura poll panel defers tribal council election to April 6

State election commission secretary Prasenjit Bhattacharjee said that it was brought to the notice of the poll panel that voting on April 4 would be inconvenient for a large section of people for whom this day holds special significance as it coincides with Easter Sunday.

Agartala: The state election commission has deferred a Tripura district council poll by two days to April 6, following objections by some political parties and a body of the Christian community to the earlier date which coincided with Easter Sunday.

The election to the 30-member Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) was earlier scheduled on April 4.

"Several representations were received from political parties and other organisations of the state, requesting the commission to change the date of poll," state election commission secretary Prasenjit Bhattacharjee said in a notification issued on Friday.

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Considering the local importance of Eastern Sunday, polling for the autonomous tribal administrative body will be held on April 6, he said.

The results will be announced on April 10.

According to the 2011 Census report, Christians account for 4.35 per cent of the state's population.

The United Christian Forum for Human Rights had objected to the council election date on April 4 and requested the commission to change it.

The opposition CPI(M) and the Congress had also protested against the state election commission's decision to hold the polling on Easter Sunday. Left body Ganamukti Parishad president Jitendra Chaudhury had posted on a social media site that Easter Sunday is on April 4, which is a special day for Christians and the commission should not have chosen the date for the ADC polling.

State Congress vice president Tapas Dey said the election date should be deferred as it coincided with a festival.

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Altogether 8,65,041 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise across 1,244 polling stations in the district council election.

Polling would begin at 7 am and continue till 9 pm.

Altogether 185 candidates of various parties, including the ruling BJP and its ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), the Left Front, the Congress and the Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA), have filed their nominations.

The last date of filing nominations was on Friday.

The scrutiny of the papers would be completed by March 15.

The TTAADC constitute a two-third area of the state territory and is home to tribals, who form one-third of Tripura's estimated 40 lakh population.

PTI

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