CPI(M), Cong urges ECI to take action against Minister Ratan Nath for announcing cash reward for polling stations gets highest turnout

Opposition CPI-M and the Congress separately on Tuesday urged the Election Commission to take appropriate action against Tripura Minister and senior BJP leader Ratan Lal Nath who announced Rs 2 lakh reward for the polling stations in five Assembly constituencies which would record the highest percentage of votes in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

Opposition leader and CPI(M) Tripura state Secretary Jitendra Chaudhury in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner (Rajiv Kumar) alleged that the minister's announcement of reward is an “open provocation of false voting”.

State Congress President Ashish Kumar Saha in his letter to the CEC urged to take immediate and decisive action to rectify these alarming developments.

“Your swift intervention in addressing these concerns will not only restore confidence in our electoral system but also reaffirm the resilience of our democratic institutions,” Saha told the CEC.

Nath, who holds the Parliamentary Affairs, Agriculture and Power Departments, on Tuesday said that during his election campaign, he announced that he would personally reward Rs 2 lakh to the polling stations in five Assembly constituencies which will record the highest percentage of votes in the Lok Sabha elections.

He said the five Assembly constituencies are Agartala, Mohanpur, Amarpur, Teliamura and Khowai.

Agartala and Mohanpur assembly segments fall under the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat, where elections were held in the first phase on April 19 and Amarpur, Teliamura and Khowai assembly constituencies come under the Tripura East (ST) parliamentary constituency, where the voting will be held in the second phase on April 26.

“This Rs 2 lakh reward would be given to BJP’s respective polling booth organisations, not any individual. Voters of these polling stations can cast his or her vote for any candidate or party of their choice,” Nath told.

Out of the five Assembly constituencies, the Agartala assembly segment has the highest number of 57 polling stations followed by 56 in Mohanpur, 54 in Teliamura, 53 in Amarpur and 52 in Khowai.

Claiming that the BJP is the best party in India, he said that the opposition INDIA bloc would suffer a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls.

Nath said that the INDIA Bloc failed to engage polling agents in a large number of polling stations in the first phase of polling in Tripura West Lok Sabha seat on April 19 and spread false propaganda of “booth capturing, rigging, manipulation done by the BJP.”

Former senior Congress leader Nath, second in command in the BJP-led Tripura government after Chief Minister Manik Saha, joined the BJP in 2017, a year before the BJP came to power in Tripura for the first time after defeating the CPI-M led-Left parties.

On April 19, 81.48 per cent of the 14.63 lakh voters cast their votes in the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat.