BJP set to win Tripura’s two Lok Sabha seats

Agartala, May 23 (IANS) For the first time, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is heading for a comfortable victory in Tripura's two Lok Sabha seats, poll officials said on Thursday.

BJP candidate Pratima Bhoumik was leading against Congress' Subal Bhowmik by around 132,000 votes in the Tripura West sear.

In the tribal reserved Tripura East seat, BJP's Rebati Tripura was ahead of his Congress rival Maharaj Kumari Pragya Deb Burman by around 122,000 votes.

Sitting members of the outgoing Lok Sabha and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) candidates Sankar Prasad Datta and Jitendra Chaudhury, who won the Tripura West and Tripura East seats by a margin of 503,486 and 484,358 votes respectively in 2014 polls, managed the third positions this time.

The BJP, which had secured 6 per cent of votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, s likely to get more than 50 per cent of votes this time, according to vote count trends.

The saffron party in alliance with the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) for the first time in the 2018 assembly polls wrested power in the state after delivering a humiliating defeat to the Left parties after 25 years.

Thirteen candidates, including a woman, are in the fray from Tripura West, while 10, including two women, are contesting from Tripura East.

Re-polling was held on May 12 in 168 of the total 1,679 polling stations in the Tripura West seat as huge electoral malpractices were found during the first phase of voting held on April 11.

Polling for the Tripura East seat was held on April 23.