Recently, the only councillor of the Trinamool Congress in Tripura, Suman Paul, joined the BJP after meeting chief minister Biplab Deb. Before this, the TMC suffered a big setback in February when rebel BJP MLAs Sudip Roy Barman and Ashish Saha joined their old party, the Congress. Both Barman and Saha had earlier joined the TMC in 2016 and then left the party to join the BJP in 2017.
With Barman returning to the grand old party, many from his camp as well as many Congress grassroots workers who had earlier joined the TMC are going back to the Congress fold.
Mamata Banerjee’s party had claimed last year that the state would see a TMC government after the 2023 Assembly elections. The TMC even emerged as the second-largest party in the prestigious Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) elections. Then what went wrong with the TMC’s plans in this Northeastern state? The party certainly wasn’t a new player per se in this Bengali-majority state, which has some political similarities with West Bengal, apart from having many cultural similarities. The TMC, primarily a Bengali-dominated party, has always had its eye on Tripura.
While similarities do exist, there are also notable differences between the two states. In Tripura, tribals account for 31 per cent of the population. They have their own rich culture, which is completely different from the Bengalis. Even in West Tripura district, which has the lowest tribal population in the state, tribals account for 20 per cent of the population. Any political party eyeing to rule this state has to have a base among the tribals, who influence results in about 35-36 seats. Out of these, 20 are reserved for them. The Trinamool Congress is almost a non-existent party in the tribal belt. It tried to ally with Pradyot Debbarman’s TIPRA Motha but those attempts didn’t bear fruits.
The affairs of the party in the state are mostly managed by leaders from West Bengal. Earlier Assam-based Sushmita Dev was given the task to strengthen the party in Tripura along with Assam. As a result, the party still doesn’t have a proper organisation even in most of the Bengali-dominated areas of the state. To bring local leaders into the party, it tried to get support from the rebel BJP group. Notably, a section of the TMC candidates for Agartala Municipal Corporation polls belonged to that group. The TMC even organised a rally in Agartala in October which was addressed by party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee where only one rebel BJP MLA — Ashish Das of Surma (SC) constituency — joined the party along with former Bengal minister Rajib Banerjee.
Although Rajib Banerjee is from Bengal, his joining in Tripura was to convey a positive message by the leadership to the Sudip Barman camp. Like Banerjee, who left the TMC to join the BJP before the 2021 Bengal Assembly polls, the Barman camp also left the TMC in 2017 to join the BJP ahead of the Tripura Assembly polls. It was said that the Barman camp wasn’t happy with the influence of the Bengal leadership in Tripura. Rajib Banerjee, who lost badly last year from his Domjur constituency, is presently the party observer in the state.
Similarly, Ashish Das, a rebel BJP MLA who was disqualified by the speaker of the Tripura assembly after he joined the TMC, has been expressing his discontent against the TMC’s Bengal leadership. Notably, the new 20 member-National Working Committee of the party doesn’t have a single member from the state. The TMC appointed Subal Bhowmik, an ex-MLA of the Sonamura constituency, as one of the party observers for the Northeast, along with Sushmita Dev and Mukul Sangma. The party is yet to form a full-fledged state committee — it is still banking on the steering committee headed by Subal Bhowmik formed in October.
The TMC with the help of a political marketing agency created a media hype that it is the main Opposition to the BJP, although even in the last civic polls, Left Front emerged as the second-largest political bloc after the BJP. With no organisation on the ground, Mamata’s party thought that such tactics would help it to gain a foothold in the Northeastern state. Subal Bhowmik, a senior leader in the state known for changing parties frequently, has been trying to continue the party programmes concentrated in Agartala and some pockets of the state. This, however, is an attempt to show that the TMC is still relevant and also to send signals to the Congress for striking an alliance. But how long will Subal Bhowmik remain in the TMC itself is a big question.
Sagarneel Sinha is a political commentator, he tweets @SagarneelSinha. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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