Pre-poll coercion begins in Jirania , Congress and CPI (M) representatives prevented from attending all party meeting convened by SDM

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, October 31, 2026

The opposition fear of coercion and violence in the campaign for the upcoming statewide elections to the 21 civic bodies seems to have started coming true as evident from what happened in the Jirania subdivision yesterday. It was only yesterday that the state election commissioner Pradip Kumar Chakraborty had announced the detailed schedule for the civic body elections and in conformity with the traditional practice the SDM (Jirania) Animesh Dhar convened an all party meeting.

But as soon as the news about the all party meeting spread a large number of BJP workers and supporters stood inside and around the SDM office to prevent any representative of the opposition parties from participating in the all party meeting. Besides, at least on three spots at a little distance from the SDM office large gangs of BJP workers and supporters stood waiting to prevent opposition representatives from coming to the office. In this situation the Jirania block Congress president Keshav Sarkar reached the SDM office but was prevented from entering the official chamber of SDM Animesh Dhar by the BJP supporters . He was forced to leave without attending the meeting and disclosed his experience to leaders of his own party as well as those of CPI (M).

Sources from Jirania said that officers of the administration as well as police personnel and officers saw everything but took no action to enable the representatives of the opposition to attend the meeting. What is interesting is that yesterday itself the state election commissioner P.K.Chakraborty had assured the opposition parties of deploying sector officers, magistrates and adequate police personnel to ensure and free and fair election process. But sources expressed fear that if the present situation continues the opposition will not be able to file even nomination papers for most of the seats in the upcoming election.

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