Tripura CM Manik Saha visits temple, seeks divine blessings

Agartala (Tripura) [India], March 2 (ANI): Amid the counting of votes for the Tripura Assembly, Chief Minister Manik Saha on Thursday paid a visit to the Tripura Sundari Maa temple and sought divine blessings.
He was accompanied by the BJP's national spokesperson Sambit Patra.
"Before the declaration of assembly election results, we pray for the blessings of Tripura Sundari Maa Temple.," Saha wrote in a social media post to which he also tagged pictures of his visit.
The counting for the polls in three Norteast states -- Tripura, Meghalaya and Tripura -- started at 8 am. Polling for the Tripura Assembly was held on February 16.
The chief minister contested the Assembly polls from the Town Bordowali constituency where he was up against Ashish Kumar Saha of the Congress and TMC's Ananta Banerjee.
Most exit poll projections in the wake of the polling for Meghalaya and Nagaland Assemblies on February 27, gave a clear edge to the BJP, with the pollsters saying that party would reach the majority mark in the 60-member Assembly.
However, as per the exit poll projections, the BJP would bag fewer seats than it did in the last Assembly elections.
The BJP, which had never won a single seat in Tripura before 2018, stormed to power in the last election in alliance with IPFT and had ousted the Left Front which had been in power in the border state for 35 years since 1978.
India Today-Axis My India exit poll predicted that BJP would get 36-45 seats and the Left-Congress will get 6-11 seats. The exit poll gave 9-16 seats to Tipra Motha.
The ZeeNews-Matrize exit poll predicted that BJP-IPFT will get 29-36 seats in the 60-member House. It said Left-Congress combine is poised to get 13-21 seats and Tipra Motha 11-16.
The BJP contested on 55 seats and its ally, IPFT, on six seats. But both allies had fielded candidates in the Ampinagar constituency in the Gomati district.
The Left contested on 47 and Congress on 13 seats, respectively. Of the total 47 seats, the CPM contested 43 seats while the Forward Bloc, Communist Party of India (CPI) and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) contested one seat each.
BJP won 36 seats in the assembly and got 43.59 per cent of the votes in the 2018 election. The CPI (M) won 16 seats with a 42.22 per cent vote share. The IPFT won eight seats and Congress could not open its account. (ANI)