As 2 BJP dissidents join Tripura Cong, party expects more to follow

Political equations in Tripura took an unexpected turn after two dissident BJP legislators joined the Congress on Tuesday (February 8), infusing a new lease of life to the grand old party that went into a coma after drawing a blank in the 2018 assembly elections.

The Tripura Pradesh Congress office in Agartala’s Post office Chowmuhani is upbeat with expectations ever since Sudip Roy Barman and Asish Kumar Saha, who had resigned as BJP MLAs on Monday (January7), came back to the party fold after six years.

Roy Barman, son of former chief minister Samir Ranjan Barman, was Tripura Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader when he had joined the TMC with five rebel Congress MLAs, including Saha, in 2016. His stint with the TMC was short-lived. He deserted the party with six MLAs to join the BJP in 2017, just months ahead of the assembly elections. He was one of the leaders instrumental in BJP’s victory in 2018 polls. In the Tirpura’s maiden BJP government, was made the health minister.

The Congress is hoping that Roy Barman will help bring more disgruntled BJP legislators into its fold.

Three dissident BJP MLAs namely Dibachandra Hrangkhawal, Burba Mohan Tripura and Atul Debbarma accompanied Roy Barman to Delhi on Monday. The first two, Congress sources said, even met Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday. They, however, decided not to quit the BJP immediately due to “some technicalities”.

Not too long ago Roy Barman took a team of 12 BJP MLAs to New Delhi to meet the party national president JP Nadda seeking removal of Biplab Kumar Deb as chief minister alleging that the “bad governance” in the state could lead to the party’s downfall in the 2023 Assembly elections.

Through Roy Barman, the Congress is now in touch with BJP rebels.

“Two leaders from the BJP have joined the Congress. Many more will follow the suit in the next few days. This has generated lots of expectation among our party functionaries. We are now quite hopeful that the rejuvenated Congress will form the government in the state in 2023,” said Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, working president of the Assam Pradesh Congress, after visiting the party office in Tripura’s capital Agartala on Tuesday.

The Congress leader may sound too optimistic, but the latest political development has surely transformed the Congress into a serious challenger to the BJP ahead of the next year’s assembly elections. More so as Roy Barman is reportedly holding parleys with Tripura’s royal scion and chairman of Tipra Motha Pradyot Manikya Deb Barman.

Deb Barman’s newly floated Tipra Motha last year got a landslide victory in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections, dealing a major blow to the BJP’s tribal ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT). Facing an existential crisis in the tribal areas of the state that account for 20 of the state’s 60 assembly seats, the IPFT has of late started distancing itself from the BJP to join hands with Motha. There are speculations that the IPFT, which has completely lost its base, will merge with Motha.

In such a scenario, if the Congress can eventually strike a deal with the Motha, it can change electoral arithmetic of the state.

The rebellion could not have come at a worst-time for the BJP. There has been simmering tension within the government over the alleged dictatorial working style of the chief minister. Its alliance with the IPFT, which has eight seats in the assembly, is in tatters, and can collapse any moment.

Also read: Discussion: Tripura not known for communal flare-ups; what changed now?

On top of that Deb’s government is also facing strong anti-incumbency with most of the pre-poll promises, mentioned in the party’s Vision Document, remaining unfulfilled.

They came to power by promising the sky to the state’s youths and have done nothing to fulfil any of their promises in the vision document,” said CPI (M) leader and former minister Jiten Chowdhury.

Things have come to such a pass that recently delegation of contractual employees working in various schemes such as the National Health Mission (NHM), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Scheme (MGNREGS) met Chowdhury seeking his party’s help to enhance their remunerations and regularize their jobs.

The employees pointed out that the BJP, before elections, had promised to regularize jobs and increase salary of the SSA teachers, and contractual employees working under various government schemes.  But in the four years since the party has come to power neither their jobs were regularized nor their salaries increased by a single rupee, they pointed out.

Also read: How and why TMC is trying to make inroads in Tripura

Promises of providing 50,000 jobs in various government departments every year, jobs in government or in private farms to every family with unemployed youth and delivering justice to the 10,323 teachers retrenched by the court verdict, on humanitarian grounds are some of the major unfulfilled promises of the government.

The unemployment rate in Tripura is now 17.1, the third highest among all states in the country.

The latest political development is also a blow to the TMC, which was hoping to swell its ranks with rebel BJP leaders. Roy Barman had a few rounds of talks with the TMC leaders last year, sparking speculation that he and his loyalists in the BJP would eventually join the ruling party of West Bengal, which succeeded in making significant inroad in the recently held civic polls in Tripura, polling about 20 per cent votes in the elections marred by violence and rigging.