Agartala: Dhanpur has a history of electing Tripura’s chief minister, having returned former CM Manik Sarkar to the assembly five times. The last time was in 2018, when the Left Front ceded power to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Sarkar became the leader of the opposition.
This time, as Sarkar sits it out, state BJP circles are abuzz with speculation that Dhanpur’s fortunes as the CM’s constituency may return with Union minister Pratima Bhoumik, who is the BJP candidate from the seat.
Tripura goes to the polls Thursday for all its 60 assembly seats. The votes will be counted on 2 March. And while incumbent Chief Minister Manik Saha is fighting the election from Town Bardowali — the seat he won in a by-election last year — all eyes are on Dhanpur.
But Bhoumik — a Union minister of state for social justice and empowerment and the sitting Lok Sabha MP from the Tripura West seat — dismisses any speculation about a change of chief minister. “The question does not arise. We already have a chief minister. It will ultimately be the decision of the central leadership,” she said.
Saha’s ascension to the top post was something of a last minute development, with then CM Biplab Deb being removed barely 10 months ahead of the assembly election. Bhoumik, however, says that isn’t on the people’s minds at all. “Nobody has asked us the reasons why. Only you are asking,” she told ThePrint Monday, hours after a high-profile rally in her constituency that was addressed by women and child development minister Smriti Irani.
While Bhoumik herself dismisses the possibility of becoming Tripura’s first woman chief minister, her state president is less emphatic. Speaking to ThePrint last week, Rajib Bhattacharya was evasive when asked why Bhoumik — an MP and Union minister — has been fielded from Dhanpur.
On the CM question, he said, “Whatever the leadership decides will happen. Even my being the president of the party, of which I have been a member since 1991, or my fighting from Banamalipur, are because the leadership so desired. We are all disciplined soldiers of the party.”
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‘No development in Dhanpur’
In 2018, Bhoumik became the first Tripura resident to become a Union minister. Santosh Mohan Deb, who had represented her Lok Sabha constituency and had also been a Union minister for the Congress, was a resident of Assam. Earlier, Bhoumik had fought and lost against Sarkar from Dhanpur twice in the 1998 and 2018 assembly elections in 1998.
Although it was the chief minister’s constituency for two decades, Bhoumik claims Dhanpur hasn’t seen much development. The area is infamous for political violence — Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate Kaushik Chanda’s house in Kathalia was reportedly attacked 16 times in the past five years.
“We lost the election last time, yet the amount of work that has been done by the BJP government here is phenomenal. We have given 8,500 houses under the PM Awas Yojana, and 7,500 people have benefited under the Kisan Samman Nidhi. People are happy with the work and they understand that because of Covid we only got to work about half of the term. When we get a full term, there will be much more development.”
She also says that despite having been defeated in the last election, it was her initiative that brought the first nationalised bank to Dhanpur — a branch of the Punjab National Bank, which she inaugurated last month. “We built a football stadium here, and ensured that there were four to six deep tube wells in every panchayat in the autonomous district council areas. Currently, we have covered about 52 per cent of the areas but if we get another term, the work will be completed,” she said.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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