After West Bengal, BJP, Trinamool set the stage for 2023 Tripura battle

Tripura is now witnessing almost everything political that West Bengal saw months before the Assembly elections in March-April.

From Trinamool Congress’ popular slogans like Khela Hobe (the game is on) to clashes among party workers and the dissent against BJP Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb have set the tone for another showdown between BJP and Mamata Banerjee’s party in 2023, a year before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when Mamata would make all-out efforts to oust the Narendra Modi government.

The fight in Tripura, however, would be just the reverse of that in Bengal. Being in power, the BJP will be the defender and will exert itself to stop the TMC from wresting power.

“Trinamool will form its government in Tripura in 2023. After Bengal’s victory, our leader Mamata Banerjee has taken this up as a challenge,” TMC national general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee told reporters in Agartala on August 17, throwing the challenge at BJP.

Abhishek, who is Mamata Banerjee’s nephew, uploaded a video on Twitter that showed a crowd hitting his car with bamboo poles near Agartala while he was on his way to the ancient Tripurasundari temple, 55 km away from the capital. He alleged that the attackers were BJP workers. Bengal, too, witnessed similar violence when the BJP challenged the ruling TMC.

Also read: Violent clashes erupt between BJP and CPI(M) activists in Tripura

The TMC’s confidence grew as more than 60,000 workers, a sizeable number from the BJP, joined the party since its victory in Bengal in May.

“The TMC is not at all a factor for us. They don’t have a block-level committee yet. Like 2018, our fight is going to be against CPI (M),” BJP spokesperson in Tripura, Nabendu Bhattacharya told DH from Agartala. “They (TMC) don’t even have a local face to lead,” he said. TMC now doesn’t have a single MLA in the 60-member Assembly.

Political observers said, however, that not having an MLA or a prominent face does not put the TMC at an insurmountable disadvantage. “In 2018, the BJP managed to wrest power from the CPI(M) government that had ruled for 25 years, and the BJP did not have a single MLA or a prominent face, either,” one observer said.

Faceless Trinamool

Unlike in Bengal, in Tripura, the TMC is struggling to find and project a leader from its soil. Former Congress leader from Assam Sushmita Dev joined Trinamool on August 16 and is leading the party’s meetings to build up the organisation. Leaders from Bengal, like Abhishek and Kunal Ghosh, are also frequently visiting Tripura, some even staging dharnas in front of police stations to protest the arrest of their workers after clashes with BJP rivals. But TMC party workers in the state feel that “outside leaders” would cause more harm.

The TMC had formed its first unit in the Bengali-majority Tripura in 1998, but never got off the blocks, barring briefly in 2016 when it poached six Congress MLAs. In 2018, BJP won 36 seats while its ally IPFT bagged eight out of nine seats it contested.

The TMC is yet to name its state unit president. “We are trying to build up our organisational base. People of Tripura want a change as the BJP betrayed them by not fulfilling the promises it made in 2018,” Sushmita said.

The BJP, meanwhile, is grappling with internal dissent, with some MLAs ranged against CM Deb. Some of these MLAs could join TMC.

Separate Tipraland

The ruling BJP faced a worrying situation in April when its ally IPFT lost elections to the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), where the tribals dominate. Tipra Motha, the regional party led by Pradyot Kishore Manikya Deb Barma, the scion of the erstwhile Tripura royal family, won the council polls. Deb Barma is harping on the demand for a “Greater Tipraland” state, which seeks to include all tribal areas outside TTAADC and the same in parts of neighbouring Assam, Mizoram and Bangladesh.

“Only a Greater Tipraland can ensure the protection of the indigenous people, their identity, culture and welfare,” Deb Barma has been saying in all public meetings.

He was the president of Congress’ Tripura unit till September 2019, when he quit the party citing high command’s pressure to accommodate “corrupt people” in the party.

The Tripuris claim they have become a minority in their own state due to largescale migration of Bengalis from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Deb Barma said his party was open for alliance with any party accepting the demand for “Greater Tipraland.”

TMC, however, has not yet made its stand clear on the Tipraland demand. “Our party will take a call. But I personally want a leader belonging to the indigenous community to be the next CM,” a senior TMC leader in Tripura, Ashish Lal Singh, told DH.

Also read: No chance of alliance with TMC, CPI-M in Tripura assembly poll: Congress

Twenty seats in the 60-seat Assembly are reserved for the tribals, while they are said to hold sway over 12 more. In 2018, the regional IPFT was BJP’s trump card in the tribal areas. “IPFT’s support base has now reduced,” said BJP spokesman Nabendu Bhattacharya. The IPFT had earlier harped on a Tipraland state, a longstanding demand of the Tripuri tribals, even as the BJP is against the division of Tripura.

“People will vote for BJP for the historic development projects our CM Biplab Kumar Deb has taken up since 2018—be it in job creation by value addition and export of local products, procurement of paddy directly from farmers by FCI, or improvement in transportation,” Bhattacharya said.

Left factor

The CPI(M), led by veteran Manik Sarkar, was defeated by BJP and IPFT in 2018 after being in power for 25 years, 20 of them with Sarkar as CM. It won only 16 seats in 2018 and is struggling to prepare its next generation of leaders. But people in both BJP and TMC camps still consider the CPI(M) to be the main contender. “BJP will not get a single seat in 2023, and our fight will be against the Left,” Ashish Lal Singh said.

Abhishek Banerjee has claimed that the TMC would trounce the BJP, as it did in Bengal. “If Bengal can, why can’t Tripura?” he asked reporters in Agartala recently.

DHNS