On Friday, the Tripura Legislative Assembly got its new speaker — Biswabandhu Sen, the MLA from the Dharmanagar seat in the North Tripura district. In the previous assembly, he held the post of deputy speaker. He got 32 votes while his opponent Gopal Chandra Roy of the Congress, who was supported by the Left Front, got 14.
While Left and Congress leaders had said initially Gopal was the joint Opposition candidate for the speaker’s post, and that he had the support of TIPRA Motha too, on the day of the election Motha MLAs staged a walkout on the pretext of not being happy with the seating arrangement in the assembly.
Even if Motha had supported the Left-Congress candidate, the BJP would have won the speaker’s election with the numbers on their side. However, with Motha coming together with the Left-Congress combine, the Opposition number would have been 27, leaving the ruling party with a thin majority. This would have sent a message of a strong Opposition.
To prevent Motha from supporting the Left-Congress candidate, Union Home Minister Amit Shah Thursday reportedly called up party supremo Pradyot Debbarma, who said the former assured that the interlocutor to look into the party's demand for constitutional solution for tribals would be appointed by March 27. What other things transpired between them is not known, the important story coming out of this is that once again the Left-Congress combine received a setback by believing that Motha is on their side — just what happened during the elections. Also, this comes as a sigh of relief for the BJP, which doesn’t want Motha to be with the Left-Congress alliance.
Political Temperature Heating Up In Bodo Territorial Region
Elections to the next Lok Sabha polls are still a year away, but the Bodoland Territorial Region is seeing a rise in political temperature already. The Bodoland People’s Front led by Hagrama Mohilary is currently holding rallies and public programmes across the region. He has been targeting his rival United People’s Party Liberal led by Pramod Boro on the issue of corruption. The UPPL is the ruling party of the Bodoland Territorial Council, which administers the Bodoland Territorial Region. The chief executive member is Pramod Boro himself and the BJP is also part of the government in the council.
Earlier, BPF was the dominant player in the region but the situation changed with the UPPL emerging as a major competitor in the BTC elections of 2020. After the results, the BJP, despite being in alliance with the BPF in the state, decided to ally with the UPPL and thus Hagrama’s party was ousted from the council for the first time. Since then, the BPF that had ruled the council for 17 years has been in decline.
Despite its request for an alliance, the BJP in the 2021 state elections decided to go with the UPPL. Of the 12 seats, UPPL won 6 while BJP secured 2. The BPF, which had won all 12 seats in the 2016 state polls, was reduced to 4. BPF then contested as a constituent of the Congress-led Grand Alliance, which also included Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front and the Left parties. But later the BPF pulled out of the Grand Alliance and started softening its tune towards the BJP. It even provided outside support to the present BJP-led NDA government of the state.
Amid speculation that it is going to have an alliance with the BJP, the party after being pushed to the wall has decided to go back to the ground to recover its lost base — and that’s the reason it has been targeting UPPL. BPF has already declared to contest the Kokrajhar and the Mangaldoi Lok Sabha seats alone.
When it comes to making alliances, BPF has always been very liberal. It first allied with the BJP when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister, and later moved to the UPA camp and had ministers in the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government. Later, it had three ministers in the first BJP government of the state led by Sarbananda Sonowal. Now out of power both in BTC and the state, the party has been desperate to gain relevance in the Bodo region again
Setback To Bhaichung Bhutia’s Hamro Sikkim Party
Bhaichung Bhutia-led Hamro Sikkim Party has got a setback, with working president Neeknor Pradhan and spokesperson Tara Bhattarai resigning from the party. Both quit saying the footballer-turned-politician was "undemocratically" running the party.
The elections to the northeastern state are only a year away. The state elections are held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls. These developments, no doubt, are a setback to Bhaichung-led HSP, which, as of now, has been unable to gain a foothold in the state. It has no representation currently in the state assembly.
Bhaichung also faces stiff competition from other parties. The main Opposition party, Sikkim Democratic Front, led by former chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling has been on the ground against the ruling party Sikkim Krantikari Morcha. It recently held the 'helmet rally' to protest against the rising political violence in the state, and blamed the SKM for this. Importantly, this rally got support from the HSP with Bhaichung too attacking the SKM for increase in political violence. Whether the HSP will contest alone or in alliance, only time will reveal, but for now it has to do an introspection over the charges of lack of democracy within itself.
The author is a political commentator.
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