THE people of Tripura, forged in the fire of prolonged mass movement against the British-like ‘divide and rule’ policy of the Centre, will never budge an inch from their strong stand in favour of the Left Front government, leading them to comprehensive development based on the unity and integrity of the state’s mixed population of tribals and non-tribals including the minority communities. In three massive election rallies held in Kamalpur sub-divisional headquarters in Dhalai district on January 5-6 and in Sonamura sub-divisional headquarters in Sepahijala district on January 7, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat voiced such confidence. Tripura is due to go to the Assembly polls next month.

The rallies were well attended. Besides Karat, the Kamalpur rally was addressed by the party sub-divisional secretary Anjan Das, local CPI(M) MLA Bijoylaxmi Sinha and CPI state joint secretary Rasbehari Ghosh, while the Sonamura rally was also addressed by AIDWA’s all India vice-president Rama Das, district AIDWA secretary Jesmin Sultana and sub-divisional secretary Arun Prava Baxmi.

Reminding the people of the promises given by the BJP in the run-up to the 2014 parliamentary polls, Karat said that the BJP portrayed a bright picture of “Achhe Din” by mitigating the people’s grievances caused by the Congress party’s misrule. Now, the out and out anti-people and pro-rich steps of the BJP after coming to power have made it known to be ‘Bharatiya Jumla Party’, surpassing the Congress party in exploiting the people. Referring to the prolonged struggle for peace and against insurgency in Tripura, she said that at the cost of the martyrdom of hundreds of leftists and common people, the Left Front government has now cornered the extremist and separatists, to pave the way for peaceful development, and the state is now known to be a paradise of peaceful development to the countrymen. But in order to boost the cornered extremists, the BJP is now acting as the mentors of the cornered militants in the same style as the Congress party had done to falsify the assembly polls in Tripura in 1988 and thrust a five-year semi-fascist rule on the state. The parlays between the IPFT leaders and the BJP leaders before and during every atrocity being perpetrated by the separatists are ample proof of this, she said.

Addressing the Sonamura rally, Karat referred to the proposed committee to probe the probability of dividing Tripura into two states, one exclusively for tribals as demanded by the IPFT. She said that the people of Tripura are fully aware of the reprehensible role played by the TUJS, TNV, ATTF, NLFT, INPT, and now the IPFT with not a single track record to work in favour of comprehensive tribal development despite forming organisations in the name of tribals of Tripura. They are being trounced in each and every election by the people. So it is crystal clear that their power house is not the people, but the political vested interests such as the RSS-BJP which are trying once again to get rid of the Left Front government by setting their current hunting cock IPFT against it, so as to steamroller the people with their pro-corporate, anti-people policies, just as the British had done by setting the RSS against the country’s freedom fighters. According to the mainstream media, the committee to be formed by the Centre will devise ways to divide Tripura. But, Karat said, the same type of ‘Jumla’ was used by the BJP towards winning the Lok Sabha seats in Darjeeling by promising to form ‘Gorkhaland’. Will the BJP-led Maharashtra accede to the demand for forming Vidarbha, or in Uttar Pradesh to the demand for ‘Bundelkhand’, she asked sarcastically. Nicknaming Narendra Modi as a “factory of falsehood”, she said that he is promising jobs in Tripura while rendering lakhs of people jobless countrywide. Tripura has the record of above 90 man-days in MNREGA, against less than 45 in Gujarat. She asked whether the Left Front’s pursuit of such pro-people policy invites revengeful economic blockade of Tripura. Since there is no reasonable reply, their only way out is the calumny campaign against the country’s best Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, she said. The people of Tripura will rebut such a politics of divisiveness and deception through a massive mandate to the Left Front once again, she asserted.

Addressing the rally, Rama Das said that the ideologically advanced women of Tripura will give a befitting reply in the upcoming election to the BJP’s misinformation campaign about persecution of women in Tripura and slandering campaign against the Left Front government’s payment of various social allowances to women here.