People's Democracy

IN a unique polarisation of the anti-Left forces in Tripura, the state unit of the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress party has entered into an electoral alliance with the IPFT, political wing of the outlawed extremist organisation NLFT.

The decision to field a common candidate against the Left Front in the coming by-election to the Tripura West parliamentary constituency was reached on January 3 afternoon in a meeting with IPFT leadership, held at the residence of state Congress president Birajit Sinha.

Besides Birajit Sinha, those present in the meeting included opposition leader in the state assembly Jahar Saha on behalf of the Congress, IPFT chairman Harinath Debbarma and TUJS president Nagendra Jamatia.

Incidentally, the TUJS, junior partner in the Congress-TUJS coalition regime of 1988-93, has already resolved to merge with the IPFT. Thus it will dissolve its 34 years old, separate identity as the hunting cock of the Congress in the tribal belts of Tripura.

It is also to be noted here that lawyer Piyush Biswas, the defeated Congress candidate in the last parliamentary polls, has recently bailed out 3 IPFT executive members and one ordinary member of the IPFT-led Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council. As reported by People’s Democracy in its October 28, 2001 issue (page 7), these people were involved in the seditious scheme of sending 63 college students of Agartala to the NLFT camps in Chittagong Hill tracts in Bangladesh for arms training.

The January 3 meeting also resolved to involve the Trinamul Congress in this alliance at the behest of the Congress. Incidentally, the Trinamul Congress state unit’s president and chairman, around whom the party has vertically split, went to Kolkata on January 2 to meet the party supremo Mamata Banerjee. Their obvious objective was to resolve their differences in the backdrop of this unprincipled unity of anti-Left opposition parties in Tripura.

Earlier, such blatantly opportunist alliances, however, met with adverse reactions from the common people of the state. The people’s apprehension now is that such a desperate attempt of the anti-Left vested interests will lead to an upsurge of extremist violence in Tripura, which has been steadily declining in the past one year, thanks to cooperation from the people. (INN)