By our correspondent
Agartala, May 02, 2019: Left Front nominee from the East Parliamentary Constituency in Tripura Jitendra Choudhury urged the Chief Election Commissioner of ECI Sunil Arora to revoke ECI decision of relieving Returning Officer of the East LS seat.
In a letter addressed to Arora, Choudhury said, “I have been given to understand from reliable sources that Shri Vikas Singh, the Returning Officer for 2-Tripura East (ST) Parliamentary Constituency has been relieved of his responsibility. My experience, as the candidate for the constituency, prompts me to urge you to revoke this decision”.
It may be noted, one report pertaining to interchanging ROs of West and East Parliamentary Constituency surfaced last night. Without wasting any time, both the Congress and CPIM vehemently opposed the decision to relieve RO of the East Constituency -Vikas Singh.
CPIM State committee secretary Gautam Das criticised the decision and also appealed to ECI to revoke the decision. state Congress chief and Congress leaders also opposed the decision, but demanded relieving RO of West from all sorts of election process till the counting process.
In the letter to Sunil Arora, Jitendra Choudhury also made similar appeal. He wrote, “I urge you to revoke your decision and allow continuation of Shri Vikas Singh as the RO of the Constituency for the sake of successful completion of the election process, including the counting as scheduled on May 23, and not replace him with an officer whose role has already come under major question”.
Choudhury also thanked the ECI for deferring April 18 poll for East LS seat to April 23 ‘in the light of what happened in course of the polling to the 1 -Tripura West PC on April 11’. The Opposition parties alleged ‘large scale rigging’ in April 18 polls. “The RO, Shri Vikas Singh, under the guidance of the Hon’ble Election Commission of India had ensured the conduct of a largely free and fair poll where an overwhelming majority of the voters could exercise their franchise”, Choudhury mentioned in his letter.
