Agartala: A party newly floated by the Tripura royal scion has won a surprise, landslide victory in the crucial Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council poll, dealing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura a major blow.
Two years after resigning from the post of president of Tripura Pradesh Congress over differences with the high command, Pradyot Kishore Manikya Deb Barman founded the combine called The Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA). On April 10, the party bagged 18 out of 28 seats of the TTAADC that went to polls on April 6.
Two members of the 30-member district council are nominated.
BJP has won 9 seats while IPFT has won none. The Left Front – which had ruled the council for four straight terms – has failed to win a seat, as has Congress.
TIPRA and its alliance partner, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT), together fielded candidates in 28 seats. BJP leaders contested in 14 seats, while its ruling partner IPFT fielded candidates in 17 seats. The two went head-to-head in three seats.
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In 2019, a month after leaving Congress, Pradyot had announced the formation of TIPRA, which was initially a social organisation and later in 2020, turned into a political party.
Pradyot won from the Takarjala-Jampuijala ADC constituency which is also the constituency of revenue minister and president of IPFT, N.C. Debbarma.
Speaking to The Wire, Pradyot said that his first goal was to take a stern approach to violence.
“I want to appeal to people to not be violent. I don’t support violence and I won’t tolerate it. Attacks are unacceptable. If any of my party members is found to be involved in such incidents I will take action. I will ask the police to take action. TIPRA is very different from other political parties. We have to end violence in our state,” he said.
TIPRA chairman Pradyot Kishore after winning the district council polls. Photo: Tanmoy Chakraborty
He also said that he will help candidates of his party who lost the district council election so as to better prepare them for the upcoming polls.
“After taking oath I will, of course, prioritise youths, women, and education. We have shown that even without an alliance with a national party, a regional party can win an election,” Pradyot said.
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Pradyot said that BJP, CPI(M) and Congress have all attempted to personally attack him.
“I never carried out any personal attacks on any leaders and my campaign was positive. Our view is independent. We are not going to compromise when it comes to our people. After oath taking, I will inform people of the district council about its functioning. Even I am not aware of exactly what has been happening in the council and I feel that people should know all this,” Pradyot said.
CPI(M) leader and former district council chairperson Radhacharan Debbarma acknowledged that the results reflected the will of people.
“People have exercised their franchise. We lost the polls and will look into what led to the failure,” he said, adding that people had used this election to raise their voice against the misrule of BJP in last three years.
Reacting to the results, BJP spokesperson Nabendu Bhattacharjee said BJP was never greedy to form a government or enjoy power.
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“Forming a council is not our main motive. People have exercised their franchise in a democratic scenario, in the TTAADC, for the first time. The political party which created terror-like situations in the past could not acquire a single seat in this election. We are not unhappy with the results,” he said, adding that BJP could not comment on ally IPFT’s performance.
The IPFT said the result was unexpected.
“It was unexpected for us. Our high-level team will discuss the results and the reasons behind it. We will analyse what led to the failure,” assistant general secretary of IPFT, Mangal Debbarma, told The Wire.
A total of 157 candidates were in the fray this year. As many as 8, 65,041 voters including 4,36,548 male, 4,28,490 females and three voters from the third gender exercised their franchise.