AGARTALA, May 15 – Before the Lok Sabha polls, the ruling CPI-M in Tripura had only one objective - to increase the margin of its contestants - and they did it in style, reports PTI. The party won both the Lok Sabha seats in the state by a record margin for the fourth time in a row and the deposits of all other contestants were forfeited.
In the 1999 general elections, Samar Chowdhury of the CPI-M defeated his Trinamool Congress rival and former chief minister Sudhir Ranjan Majumder by 1,98,399 votes in the West Tripura constituency. And this time, CPI-M’s Khagen Das defeated his nearest Congress rival Nirmala Dasgupta by a hopping 3,84,636 votes. Das bagged 4,96,843 votes, Dasgupta got 1,12,207 votes and Amal Mallik of Trinamool Congress polled only 67,379 votes.
For the East Tripura (ST) constituency, Baju Ban Riyan (CPI-M) beat BJP candidate Jishnu Debbarma by a margin of over 1,50,500 votes in the 1999 polls. This time Riyan increased his margin and defeated BJP’s Pulin Bihari Dewan by 3,10,736 votes. While Riyan polled 4,14,230 votes, Dewan got 1,03,494 votes. Congress’ Jadu Mohan Tripura got 76,927 votes.
The Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), former ally of Congress in the 2003 Assembly polls, joined the NDA later. Though the Trinamool Congress together with the INPT and the BJP put up common candidates against the ruling Left Front, that did not yield any result.