AGARTALA: After neighbouring Assam, the relation between the ruling BJP and its junior ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) turned bitter ahead of the April 4 elections to the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), which is considered as the mini-State Assembly in terms of political significance.
Both the BJP and the IPFT are yet to finalize their seat-sharing in the 28-member TTAADC and even the leaders of the two parties are acusing each other on the issue. The much-awaited elections to the TTAADC will be held on April 4 and the statutory notifications would be issued on Thursday.
In alliance with the tribal-based party IPFT, the BJP won the Assembly polls just three years ago (2018) ousting the 25-year uninterrupted governance of the Communist Party of India-Marxist led Left Front. The BJP and the IPFT had secured 36 and 8 seats respectively in the 60-member assembly while remaining 16 seats were bagged by the CPI-M.
The IPFT President and Revenue Minister Narendra Chandra Debbarma said that despite their repeated appeal, the BJP leadership in Tripura and at the Centre did not yet discuss the seat sharing pattern and ratio in the upcoming TTAADC polls, which has a jurisdiction of over two-thirds of Tripura's 10,491 sq km area and home to over 12,16,000 people, 90 per cent of which are tribals.
"After getting no response from the state leadership, delegations led by our party's General Secretary and Forest Minister Mevar Kumar Jamatia went to Delhi three times and urged the BJP's central leaders including the party's President J.P. Nadda to finalise the seat sharing for the TTAADC polls. But, unfortunately, the BJP leadership remained quiet on our repeated requests," Debbarma told IANS.
Both Debbarma and Jamatia told IANS separately on Wednesday that they yet to get any invitation from the BJP leadership even as the BJP's central observer Vinod Kumar Sonkar arrived here on Tuesday to discuss the TTAADC poll strategies with the state leadership of the saffron party.
The BJP-IPFT relation further deteriorated after the tribal based party's (IPFT) top leadership since February 20 held a series of meetings with Tripura's royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman, who was earlier state President of Congress but subsequently quit the party in 2019, recently formed an alliance of few tribal based parties and named TIPRA (The Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance). (IANS)