THE CPI(M) has expressed its total confidence that the BJP’s ongoing machinations for garnering narrow political gain in the upcoming assembly election in Tripura will be rejected by a massive mandate for the Party. CPI(M) state secretary Bijan Dhar at a press conference in Agartala on January 6 reacted to the recent parleys between top BJP leaders and those of IPFT(NC), which is an open political wing of the outlawed extremist outfit NLFT. According to the local media, both BJP and IPFT will form an electoral alliance and the BJP has agreed to consider the IPFT(NC)’s demand for a ‘separate Twipraland’, a dividing already tiny state like Tripura. Dhar vehemently condemned such nefarious nexus between the communal and the separatist forces and also remarked that such unholy alliance will be rejected outright in the upcoming polls by the peace-loving, democratic-minded people of Tripura.

Dhar said that the BJP-IPFT(NC) communal-separatist alliance was already a foregone conclusion in view of the series of incidents spread over the last few months in Tripura. The incidents amply indicate how the BJP and even the Union cabinet have sponsored the IPFT(NC)’s attempt to trigger ethnic tension and turmoil aimed at an ethnic flare-up in Tripura. The IPFT(NC)’s rail and highway blockades, the attack on GMP rallyists and CPI(M) party offices in several places in Tripura, the butchering of a mediaperson and a motor worker and finally the political shelter and induction into the BJP of two people charge-sheeted in the murder case of the mediaperson – all these make it clear that it is the BJP which encourages the IPFT in a bid to get political dividend in Tripura, in spite of the fact that IPFT(NC) is supported by the still outlawed extremist outfit NLFT, still encamped in Bangladesh territory, and also that the IPFT has been lobbying with the BJP functionaries for a separate state exclusively for tribals, carved out of the tribal belts scattered all over this tiny Tripura.

The CPI(M) leader has vehemently condemned the fact that the BJP-led Centre, with a view to expedite the BJP-IPFT poll alliance and create an atmosphere of parochial political bargaining, has imperilled the time-tested peace and ethnic harmony of Tripura by thrusting its tribal-non-tribal people on to a severe unrest and uncertainty for no fault of their own. Although the BJP-led Centre is not yet making its position clear on the issue of the separate state, it knows very well the position of the state government as also of all the political parties of the state. Despite such a shrewd stand of the Centre, all the political parties other than the BJP and the IPFT(NC) have openly expressed absurdity of dividing the tiny Tripura. Dhar voiced his amazement that a national political party ruling at the Centre and several states, instead of trying to mitigate the other burning problems of the day, has formed just a committee to dangle the carrot of a ‘separate Twipraland’ state in front of some fissiparous secessionist forces of the country. This is nothing but the BJP’s unprincipled futile bid to divert the public attention from its ongoing pro-corporate onslaughts on the countryman through its divisive machinations, Dhar said.

He severely denounced the bid by some BJP leaders to trick a section of the 10,323 discharged teachers into believing that the BJP, after coming to power in Tripura, will enact an act in the Assembly to invalidate the Supreme Court verdict for their dismissal.

Former Tripura Opposition leader Sudip Roy Barman accompanied some of the teachers to meet Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar. Earlier, when he was in the Congress party, he himself wrote to the president and the prime minister for preventing the Left Front government from making the recruitment to the teachers’ posts. Later on he arranged a lawsuit for dismissal of the appointees. Dhar challenged the BJP either to bring a bill for teachers’ reinstatement in Parliament which will be supported by the CPI(M) or disclose to the CPI(M), how a Supreme Court order can be vacated by the Assembly. The bogus promise is only designed to make a dent into the unity of the victim teachers and employees of Tripura, he said.