Express News Service
GUWAHATI: The BJP managed to revive its alliance with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), thereby staving off TIPRA Motha’s bid to forge an alliance with IPFT.
Elections for the 60-member Tripura assembly are scheduled for February 16.
“The BJP has trumped tribal party Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA), also known as ‘Tipra Motha’ by dramatically resurrecting its ties with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT),” website of right-wing magazine Swarajya reported.
It may be recalled that to avoid the division of tribal votes and corner the BJP, the TIPRA chief and royal scion Pradyot Manikya Debbarma desperately wanted the IPFT to merge with his party. Recently, he held a closed-door meeting with the IPFT leadership, reportedly in Guwahati.
Later in a video message, he said the two parties agreed to start a process of becoming a “singular” party and fight the election with a “singular flag and symbol” against anyone opposed to the “Constitutional demand” of “Greater Tipraland” state.
The BJP, which is facing a tough contest, however, forged a pre-poll alliance with the IPFT. As per their understanding, the BJP will contest 55 seats and the IPFT 5. Even in 2018, they had fought the election together and formed a coalition government but their ties strained in due course which saw three of the 8 IPFT MLAs embracing TIPRA Motha.
The BJP and the IPFT announced their pre-poll alignment at a joint media briefing on Saturday night. In a last-ditch attempt, Debbarma tried to stall the alliance. He called almost all IPFT leaders but none of them responded.
“…Looks like Operation lotus is on!” Debbarma later tweeted.
Tripura has 60 seats – 20 of them reserved for the STs in tribal areas where the tribe-based parties TIPRA Motha and IPFT hold sway. But the TIPRA Motha is attempting to make it a pan-Tripura party.
It released its first list of 20 candidates on Saturday night. Twelve of them have been fielded in ST-reserved seats, 2 in SC-reserved seats and 6 in the general seats.
The party is going it alone. The BJP was interested in stitching an alliance with the party but it sought a written assurance that the Centre would grant Greater Tipraland to the Tiprasa (Tripura’s ethnic communities). The BJP refused to give anything in writing.