Agartala: The ruling BJP and its major ally Tipra Motha Party have jointly won a little over 35 per cent of the total seats in the Tripura Village Committee elections unopposed, with Tipra Motha securing far more seats than the BJP.
While the BJP managed to secure victory in 82 seats, Tipra Motha won 1,548 seats unopposed, taking the combined tally of the two ruling allies to 1,630.
The total number of seats won unopposed, according to the State Election Commission, stands at 1,630, which is more than 35 per cent of the 4,597 seats for which elections are scheduled to be held on September 28.
Tipra Motha, which is the stronger party in the hilly areas, outnumbered the BJP by more than 1,400 seats in the unopposed victories. Election officials said the figures were arrived at after the completion of the late-stage withdrawal of nomination papers on September 11.
A total of 1,069 contestants withdrew their nomination papers on September 11. Of these, BJP candidates withdrew nominations from 105 seats, while Tipra Motha candidates withdrew from 80 seats.
The CPI(M), Congress, IPFT, CPI and candidates in the others category, comprising independents and nominees of unrecognised parties, withdrew nominations from 302, 39, 128, one and 414 seats, respectively.
The remaining 2,967 seats will see contests after the completion of the nomination withdrawal process. Tipra Motha has the highest number of candidates in the fray at 2,731, followed by the CPI(M) with 2,151, the BJP with 1,853, independents with 753, the Congress with 425 and the IPFT with 356 candidates. The party-wise figures refer to candidates and therefore add up to more than the total number of seats because multiple candidates are contesting individual seats.
The figures have also brought into focus the extent to which the seat-sharing understanding between the BJP and Tipra Motha was implemented at the ground level. Despite several rounds of discussions between the two ruling allies, candidates of both parties remained in the fray in a number of seats, even though their leaders had said that contestants from either side would withdraw nominations wherever both had fielded candidates.
The two parties had held discussions at multiple levels before announcing on September 10 that they had finalised the broad contours of their seat-sharing arrangement for the September 28 Village Committee elections under the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council.
The announcement followed another round of talks between senior leaders of the two parties on Thursday. Leaders had said the finer details of the arrangement would be finalised after consultations with local-level functionaries.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ratan Lal Nath said the presence of candidates from both the BJP and Tipra Motha in several seats was largely the result of the limited time available to finalise the seat-sharing arrangement and the failure of the alliance’s message to reach the grassroots.
“Accordingly, either of the candidates shall withdraw their nomination papers in the seats where due to the confusion, contestants of both the parties have filed nomination papers,” Nath said.
He said the two parties had reached an understanding in around 80 per cent of the cases and that the differences over the remaining seats would be resolved.
Nath also underlined the importance of the Village Committee elections and said the large number of seats involved had required detailed discussions between the alliance partners. He said the seat-sharing exercise had taken into account the results of the 2026 TTAADC general elections.
“Whatever formula has been chalked out to distribute seats between two ally parties, the outcome of the TTAADC elections was considered as a basis for that,” he said.
Senior Tipra Motha leader and MLA Ranjit Debbarma also said the alliance would seek to ensure that only one candidate remained in the contest from the two parties in seats where both had originally submitted nomination papers.
“All the disputes shall be sorted out by tomorrow. After having telephonic conversations with our leaders at the block level, we will sort this out by tomorrow,” he said.
Debbarma said the final number of seats allocated to each party could still change and that feedback from leaders at the block level would be taken into account before the arrangement was finalised.
The State Election Commission’s figures, however, show that the withdrawal process did not result in complete elimination of overlapping candidates from the two parties. BJP nominees withdrew from 105 seats and Tipra Motha nominees from 80 seats, but the available figures do not establish from the withdrawal data alone how many of the remaining contests involve candidates of both alliance partners.
The development has therefore raised questions over the gap between the understanding reached by the senior leadership and its implementation at the local level. While the alliance leadership had maintained that the seat-sharing exercise had broadly been settled, the number of candidates remaining after the withdrawal process indicates that the arrangement had not translated into a single-alliance-candidate formula across all seats.
BJP Tripura Pradesh president Abhishek Debroy said the National Democratic Alliance was confident of securing a decisive victory in the Village Committee elections.
The discussions on seat-sharing were primarily held between the BJP and Tipra Motha. The IPFT, another NDA constituent, did not participate in the meeting. Debroy said the absence of the IPFT was not an issue as the party had already reached an understanding on the terms under which it would contest the elections.
The BJP and Tipra Motha had contested the 2026 TTAADC general elections separately. Debroy said that decision had been taken on the basis of the respective positions of the two parties at the time, while the present leadership had decided to contest the Village Committee elections together.
Nath described the earlier distance between the two parties as an “electoral tactic” and said the BJP and Tipra Motha had remained allies since 2024 and were running the government together.
The issue of candidate coordination had also become a point of political contention after opposition parties raised allegations of threats and obstruction during the nomination process. Debroy rejected the allegations made by the CPI(M) and Congress and accused the opposition of attempting to create a “false narrative”.
The BJP and Tipra Motha had maintained that their seat-sharing arrangement was based on an understanding reached at the leadership level, with the leaders repeatedly indicating that overlapping nominations would be resolved during the withdrawal process. The final figures released after withdrawals, however, show that 2,967 seats will still see contests, with candidates from the two principal alliance partners continuing to remain in the field in a number of constituencies.