Tripura: Fear of political violence brings opposition together

The CPI (M)-led Left Front and Congress are negotiating a seat-sharing alliance for the forthcoming Tripura assembly polls, replicating their mutual understanding in the West Bengal assembly polls of 2021, but hopeful of better results. In Bengal, the CPM-led Left Front and Congress couldn't win any of the 294 seats.

In Tripura in 2018, the BJP ousted the Left Front, which had ruled the northeastern state since 1993. The BJP won 35 of the 59 (of the total 60) seats that went to the polls. Its ally, the IPFT, won eight. However, since then, five BJP and three IPFT MLAs have quit their respective parties.

The latest is Dibachandra Hrangkhawal, who resigned from the BJP on Wednesday. Hrangkhawal, a four-term tribal MLA from Karamcherra in the Dhalai district, joined Congress on Thursday at a rally with his supporters. He had quit Congress to join the BJP in the run-up to the 2018 polls.

Also Read: Assembly polls 2023: EC full team on two-day visit to Tripura from Jan 11

Rebellion by party MLAs forced the BJP's top leadership to sack Biplab Deb as the chief minister in May, replacing him with Manik Saha. Hrangkhawal and BJP Agartala MLA Sudip Roy Barman were key MLAs who complained against Deb. Barman subsequently quit the BJP and contested and won the bypoll on the Congress ticket. Barring Barman's seat, the BJP won the rest of the three bypolls that have taken place since then.

According to Congress sources, the party is also in talks with Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma-led TIPRA Motha. In the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) elections in April 2021, within two months of Debbarma having quit the Congress to float his party, the TIPRA Motha-INPT alliance won 18 of the 28 seats, with the BJP-IPFT alliance winning only nine.

On Wednesday, hinting at their eventual alliance, the five Left parties - the CPI(M), Forward Bloc, CPI, RSP and the CPI(ML) - and the Congress issued a joint statement. It appealed to the "peace­-loving" people of Tripura to demand the restoration of democracy, re-establishing the rule of law and the EC conducting a free and fair election.

The opposition fears large-scale political violence in the state since, it says, the BJP has lost people's support. CPI(M) state secretary Jitendra Choudhury claimed Pradyot broadly endorsed the views expressed in the statement but could not sign it as he was out of the state.

Tripura CM Saha on Thursday termed the statement an "opportunist understanding". He said the love between the CPI(M) and Congress was a secret affair, but now it is out in the open. "People are not taking it positively," Saha said. The CM said the CPI(M) and the Congress still needed to learn a lesson from Bengal, where they had contested polls jointly against the Trinamool Congress but failed.

Also Read: BJP says it's preparing to fight Tripura polls alone

However, alliance talks are unlikely to be easy given that the CPI(M) won 16 seats in 2018, but its vote share, at 42.22%, was barely 1.4 per cent lesser than the BJP's 43.59%, while the Congress not only didn't win a single seat, its vote share was less than 2% vote share. But Sudeep Roy Barman, now the Congress face, and Left leaders, believe the fear of political violence, the only recourse left for the ruling party if it has to win by reducing the polls to a face, will bring the opposition together.