AGARTALA, July 19 (TIWN): Tripura’s rural voters gave the thumbs up to only Left Front ruled state in the country, which decimated the Congress in the violence-hit panchayat polls. With the vote count in the three-tier election drawing to a close, the Left Front swept the zilla parishad, panchayat samiti and gram panchayat -- all three levels of rural governance.

Clearly, the termination of more than ten thousand teachers by High Court of Tripura   scandal - and rising crime against women and other issues, failed to sway the voters. The mandate showed that triangular fights hurt the Congress the most. The Trinamool and BJP managed to increase its sphere of influence as both party cut into Congress votes.

The Left Front   won absolute majority in the villa parishads in 7 of  8 districts. Of the 116 zilla parishad seats, 115 went to the Left Front and congress managed to get one seats. Out of 419 panchayat samities seat left front won 412 seats and congress won 7 seats.  In gram panchayat ruling Left Front won over 95 percent of seats, out of 591 gram panchayats ruling party won 563 panchayats, congress managed to win only 20 d BJP won 4 gram panchayats while Trinamool won 3 gram panchayats. Both BJP and Trinamool won for first time.   

Commenting on the result the CPM state secretary, Bijan Dhar, said the Left Front had improved upon its performance in 2009 by securing more seats and panchayat bodies. “It is a conscious and mature mandate of the people in favour of the Left Front and a reward for its performance in ensuring all-round development in rural areas,” said Das.

The state BJP president Sudheendra Dasgupta also expressed his “dismay” at the results.“We expected to do better, specially in North Tripura district but this has not happened. We are disappointed but we will make best efforts to strengthen our organisation for improved performance in the future,” said Dasgupta.

Trinamool state president  Surajit Datta expressed disappointment over the results, attributing the party’s poor show to “organisational weakness and CPM’s terror tactics”.performance in the future,” said Dasgupta. Though no leader of the Congress was available for comment.

In the 2009 panchayat polls, the Opposition parties, including the regional INPT, had captured altogether 92 gram panchayats of the then 511 gram panchayats but the trend of counting today indicated that the Opposition would fall short of last election’s performance.