Tripura: How Pradyot Manikya's Tipra Motha Party may hold key to power in northeastern state

Tipra Motha Party will contest in 42 seats out of 60 seats in Tripura assembly polls.

New Delhi, Feb 13: Tripura is set to witness a triangular contest in the upcoming assembly elections after Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barma's Tipra Motha Party (TMP) entered the fray.

The Tipra Motha Party has announced that it will contest in contest 42 of the 60 seats in polls, which will be held on February 16. Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barma, the scion of the erstwhile Tripura royal family, is expected to become the kingmaker as his party has the potential to win seats, especially in the tribal-dominated regions.

Following the success in Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) polls in 2021, in which it bagged 18 of the 30 seats in the body, Tipra Motha has decided to go solo and hopes to sweep the 20 tribal-dominated seats that hold the key to power in the northeastern state that has a 60-member assembly.

Pradyot Manikya was an active Congress politician. His father Kirit Bikram Debbarma was a three-time MP and his mother Bibhu Kumari, a two-time Congress MLA had served as the Revenue Minister of Tripura. He quit the grand old party in 2019 and announced his Tipraland State Party in 2021.

His party has been pushing for a new state called 'Greater Tipraland' and this has worked in favour of his party in the TTAADC polls as tribals, that forms around 32 per cent of the state's population, fear losing their electoral relevance due to the inflow of East Bengal refugees from Partition, and during the creation of Bangladesh, according to a NDTV report.

However, he does not believe in dividing people on those lines. "These are old cliches, of palace to politics. I am someone who grew up and studied in the northeast, and I am fighting for the constitutional rights of the tribals. However, I am not against others, and carry a legacy that taught me this," the website quotes him as saying.

Even the BJP has targeted the TMP that its will affect the Bengali-tribal harmony. However, its supporters deny it. "Our Maharaja is not communal, he is taking everyone along. Schedules caste, tribals, non-tribals, are all standing with him. This is his family legacy. When the Bengalis came as refugees of partition, it was the royal family that allowed them to settle here," Pradip Mitra of Shantirbazar in South Tripura told the website.

In the 2018 assembly polls, in which the BJP-Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) combine ended the 25-year-long rule of the Left Front, the saffron party had bagged 36 seats, including 10 ST reserved constituencies, while its alliance partner had bagged eight seats. However, the IPFT began losing public support after failing to deliver its core demand of Tipraland state, and instead agreeing to a common minimum programme of the BJP under which the Centre constituted a panel for socio-economic and linguistic development of the tribals, political observers told PTI.

The IPFT, which once played a key role in eroding the Left Front's traditional tribal vote bank, over the last two-and-half-years suffered loss of support base as Tipra Motha began harping on the demand for Greater Tipraland. Political observers believe that Tipra Motha's popularity rose not only because it raised the separate statehood demand but also because tribals still revere the erstwhile royal family and they refer to Pradyot Debbarma as 'Bubagra' or king. Seeing Tipra Motha's rise in the tribal area, CPI(M) and Congress, rivals that joined hands, and even the BJP sought an electoral adjustment with the regional party but failed due to Debbarma's uncompromising attitude towards the Greater Tipraland demand, the political observers added.

According to veteran journalist and political analyst Sekhar Dutta, the entry of TMP gives a blow to the BJP in the tribal areas. "Tipra Motha will certainly perform well in TTAADC areas banking on its Greater Tipraland demand, while the BJP is unlikely to retain its tally of 10 ST seats due to the regional outfit's growing popularity among tribal voters. Moreover there are six to eight non-reserved seats where tribal voters are the deciding factor. Hence, the BJP has to win more seats in the plains if it wants to retain power," he said.

How Parties are Contesting?

BJP is contesting in 55 seats, and its ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) in five seats. The CPI(M) will contest 43 seats, and its Left Front partners Forward Block, RSP and the CPI one each. The Left Front is also supporting an independent candidate in Ramnagar constituency in West Tripura. The Congress will contest 13 seats, the Trinamool Congress 28, while there are also 58 Independent candidates.

With inputs from PTI