BJP moves to regain tribals' support in Tripura using royal scion Pradyot Debbarman ahead of 2024 polls

Tribal votes in Tripura are considered to be the determinant of victory in any election, as it has 20 reserved seats in the assembly and one seat in Lok Sabha while they have significant presences in another 22 assembly constituencies and in the unreserved Loksabha seat.

Earlier, CPI(M) had a solid base in the tribal areas but it was eroded by IPFT and later by royal scion’s Pradyot Kishore Debbarman’s party TIPRA Motha.

Allegedly, in the just concluded assembly election, the BJP used Motha in 22 unreserved tribal seats and funded Pradyot to put candidates that divided the non-BJP tribal votes and ensured the defeat of the Congress-CPI(M) combined in those seats.

As a result, BJP narrowly secured the victory with 33 seats in the 60-member assembly, and TIPRA Motha became the main opposition in the assembly with 13 MLAs.

However, to keep them separated from the Congress and CPI(M), the BJP has allegedly been offered ministerial berths and several other administrative posts to Motha MLAs on the one hand, on the other, home minister Amit Shah and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma engaged in dialogue with Pradyot’s demand of constitutional solution of tribals without specifying the details.

Based on Shah’s meeting Pradyot was campaigning for two months the central government has agreed to appoint an interlocuter to look at the demand of Greater Tipraland.

Pradyot himself had announced the name of former IPS officer and the mediator of the Naga peace talks A K Mishra as interlocuter for Tripura as well as his schedule for visiting the state although Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha denied such a decision.

Pradyot Kishore Debbarman faced serious embarrassment after failing to ensure the appointment of an interlocutor till now while the opposition questioned the validity of the interlocutor’s engagement. The leaders and workers of TIPRA became unhappy with Pradyot believing that he fell into the trap of BJP marginalizing Motha in the hills and regaining BJP’s support base.

“Pradyot Kishore now becomes a puppet in the hands of BJP; he cannot get out of this. He might have forgotten the modalities committee constituted by MHA in 2018 in response to Tipraland demand of its ally IPFT, which yield nothing in five years and now it is erased. The so-called interlocutor is nothing but a big bluff to innocent tribal and cheats their sentiment,” alleged CPI(M) State Secretary Jitendra Chaudhury.

TIPRA Motha is in power at the ADC and had been accorded the status of the principal opposition in the assembly. “If the government is keen to resolve issues of the indigenous people, the talks may take place across the table. TIPRA Motha, after all, is not an outlawed outfit”, Choudhury observed and added that usually interlocutors are appointed to invite banned outfits to the table of talk.

“When our state had seen the rise of insurgent groups like TNV, NLFT, and ATTF at different points in time, the Indian government appointed interlocutors for holding talks. Although all these back-channel talks occurred unofficially. Now who are the proponents of the appointment of interlocutors is unknown to me but if it happens, it will undermine the constitution of India”, he pointed out.