• Abhijit Nath, NET Correspondent, Tripura 

Agartala, December 18, 2021 : Pradyot Kishore Manikya, a Member of Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) on Friday made a proposal before the state election commission to conduct elections of village committees in tribal council area without symbol of political parties.

“If elections are held without symbol, the political clash can be avoided. In Maharashtra and Rajasthan, elections are being conducted without symbol of political parties”, he said while speaking on the first day of ADC session which commenced in Khumulwng today.

While participating on a discussion of public interest resolution on holding Village Committee elections initiated by Chief Whip Rabindra Debbarma, Pradyot made it clear that maintaining law and order in ADC areas is the sole responsibility of the state government.

“A section of people are trying to fish in troubled water in the tribal council’s function. The person, who was responsible for disrupting peace in Khumulwng last year, has engineered yesterday’s incident in front of Khumpui Academy”, he alleged.

However, he appealed the MDCs to take steps for averting political clash in tribal council’s areas.

On the other hand, leader of opposition, Hansa Kumar Tripura said village committee election would not be possible if the prevailing law and order situation in ADC is not improved. “Our own people are battling against each other. Yesterday’s incident at Khumulwng is shameful for us. Therefore, peace must be restored in the tribal council area before holding village committee polls”, he stated.

MDC Bimal Chakma urged the ADC administration to prepare Rule for conducting village committee elections. If elections are not possible then joint committees can be put in place to run village committees.

While speaking on the resolution, the Chief Whip said there is an urgent need to conduct elections in all the 587 village committees of the ADC immediately. “If elections are not held, the XV Finance Commission will stop releasing fund to the ADC that may lead to a chaotic situation for the ADC”, he said.

Debbarma alleged, the tenure of village committees has been expired a long time back. “The ADC administration has requested the state government to conduct village committee elections a long time back but it has not given any green signal citing Covid situation.”

“If elections to the civic bodies can take place, why is the same thing stalled for ADC? Development works have been severely affected for not holding elections,” – he said. Later, the resolution was accepted in the ADC session unanimously.