Agartala, Rejecting the demand of the Opposition parties, the BJP-led government in Tripura has decided to defer the elections to the 20 urban local bodies including the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) and has appointed administrators, officials said on Friday.

A senior official of the Urban Development Department said that West Tripura's District Magistrate and Collector Shailesh Kumar Yadav would be the administrator of AMC while the concerned Sub-Divisional Magistrates would be the administrators of other municipal bodies and Nagar Panchayats.

Opposition Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Congress have strongly criticised the BJP-led government for not conducting the elections to these urban local bodies and appointing administrators instead.

Both the Opposition parties demanded early elections to the 20 urban local bodies in Tripura.

Former Urban Development Minister in the previous Left Front government Manik Dey termed the postponement of the elections to the urban local bodies as "undemocratic" and said that the ruling BJP would govern these important urban bodies through the "administrators".

"The BJP government has undertaken the delimitation work inappropriately in these urban bodies and purposely delayed the task to defer the elections," said Dey, a veteran CPI-M leader.

Terming the BJP government's steps as "most undemocratic", Congress leader Tapas Dey said that due to the "growing internal feud", the BJP is afraid of facing the electorate as they felt that the people would not vote in its favour.

"Despite Covid-19 pandemic, elections were held in many states including Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, then why elections in the Tripura tribal autonomous body and in the urban local bodies have been deferred ? We are considering going to the Court soon to get legal intervention to hold the elections in these bodies at the earliest," Dey said.

Rejecting the Opposition parties' accusations, the BJP said that elections to the Tripura tribal autonomous body and in the 20 urban local bodies would be conducted soon.

"Besides the Covid-19 pandemic, the elections could not be held in the midst of the ongoing delimitation exercise. Developmental work was also halted when the CPI-M was running many of the urban bodies," BJP spokesman Nabendu Bhattacharjee said.

The AMC and two other urban local bodies are governed by the CPI-M while the 17 local government bodies are under the control of the BJP.

The CPI-M leaders alleged that the BJP after coming to power in March 2018, "forcibly occupied" most of the urban local bodies, which were under the Left parties control.