BJP capture five civic bodies without contest , 879 file nominations for 345 Wards in 21 civic bodies

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, November 7, 2026

As apprehended well in advance by the PCC president Asish Kumar Saha, the ruling BJP captured by force five Nagar Panchayat and Municipal bodies without contest after the last date for filing nomination expired yesterday. According to information disseminated by the state election commission authority the opposition forces here led by Congress and CPI (M) could not file any nomination in the Ranir Bazar and Jirania Nagar panchayats and Kamalpur, Mohanpur and Santir Bazar municipal bodies because of threat of attacks and intimidation by the BJP workers and supporters. Sources in the left front said that threat and intimidation of potential candidates had commenced in these five civic bodies immediately after the declaration of elections to them and finally no opposition candidate could file papers there and in none of them the opposition parties could even attend the all party meetings called by the returning officers (ROs).

According to information of the state election commission, however, altogether 879 candidates belonging to all the parties filed nomination papers for altogether 345 Wards across all the civic bodies . The number of candidates would have been more , had the opposition parties been allowed to file papers for Mohanpur, Ranir Bazar, Jirania, Kamalpur and Santir Bazar civic bodies. The party-wise break-up of nomination filers are as follows : BJP-345, CPM-263, Congress-221, ‘Tipra Motha’-15 and other parties-35. There are altogether 21 civic bodies in the state including the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) . The nomination papers are being put to scrutiny today and the last date for withdrawing nominations falls on November 10. The voting in the civic polls will take place on November 27 from 7-00 in the morning to 4-00 in the afternoon and the counting will be done on December 2.

Meanwhile, the CPI (M) state secretary and politburo member Jiten Chowdhury has condemned the SDM (Teliamura) Apurba Krishna Chakraborty as ‘an agent of CPI (M)’ . He said that the SDM had been in league with the BJP miscreants to foil the filing of nomination by three CPI (M) candidates in the 11-Ward Teliamura Nagar Panchayat. Even though complaints had been filed , the SDM took no action to enable three CPI (M) candidates to file nominations papers yesterday, the last day of filing.

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