New Delhi: The decision of Tripura’s Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA Motha) — the state’s principal Opposition party — to join the Manik Saha-led government comes as a major shot in the arm for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the upcoming general election. The TIPRA Motha is led by Pradyot Debbarma, former Congressman and scion of the erstwhile Manikya dynasty.
The Motha’s joining Thursday comes on the back of a tripartite agreement signed on 2 March by the Motha with the Centre and the BJP government led by Chief Minister Manik Saha to “amicably resolve” issues concerning the rights of the indigenous people of Tripura.
The move, which caps rounds of talks between Motha and the BJP’s central leadership, brings to fruition the ruling BJP’s long-term plan to blunt the Motha’s impact on the tribal electorate by turning it into an ally.
The Motha has 13 legislators in Tripura’s 60-member assembly.
In the short term, the BJP hopes to gain from Motha’s support in the upcoming general election. Tripura sends two MPs to the Lok Sabha, one each from a reserved and unreserved seat. Currently, both are represented by the BJP.
However, a section of the tribal party believes that getting to field its own candidate from the reserved east Tripura seat over and above the two Cabinet berths it has secured is the best-case scenario that the Motha can hope for, but the BJP is unlikely to be overly generous.
That the Motha failed to get enough numbers to play the role of a kingmaker in 2023, seemingly only helps the BJP’s cause, which scraped past the halfway mark of 30, winning 32 seats in the 60-member assembly.
“But whoever the BJP eventually fields needs to have our approval. It may not necessarily be a Motha leader. We have firmly opposed the potential candidatures of the sitting MP Rebati Tripura and BJP leaders Patal Kanya Jamatia and Jishnu Dev Verma. But yes, the BJP surely stands to gain from tribal support now. It has a sure shot chance of convincingly winning both the seats now,” a top Motha leader told ThePrint.
Jamatia, who led the Tripura People’s Front that advocated the need for a separate state before joining the BJP in March 2022, does not see eye to eye with Debbarma, who also shares bitter ties with Jishnu Dev Verma, another former Tripura royal family member who served as the deputy chief minister between 2018 and 2023. Dev Verma lost the 2023 assembly polls from Charilam to Motha’s Subodh Deb Barma.
But it is evident that more than the Motha, it is the BJP that stands to gain from the latest development — not only has it turned Motha into an ally, it has also managed to wean it away from the path of agitation that helped the latter galvanise the tribal electorate ever since its formation in 2019.
A clause in the tripartite agreement says that “all stakeholders shall refrain from resorting to any form of agitation/protest” till an “honourable solution” is reached, denying Motha any opportunity to take to the streets anytime soon over its core demand — a separate state for Tripura’s indigenous people, Greater Tipraland.
In an interview with ThePrint before the assembly election, Debbarma had said his party would only go with a party that would give it “written assurance” for Greater Tipraland.
On its part, the Motha has said that the change in the political scenario does not mean that the party will give up its demand for a separate Greater Tipraland.
“Only the BJP is in a position to address, or even attempt to address, our demands because they are in power with a brute majority,” a Motha leader who didn’t want to be named told ThePrint. “We cannot go on protesting perpetually. And it is not our fault that the Congress is a spent force, not just in the northeast but nationally.”
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Motha’s predicament
Significantly, the BJP had handled the IPFT (Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura), its other tribal ally, similarly in the past. The IPFT had steered an intense agitation demanding a separate state for tribals in the run-up to the 2018 state election, only to join the BJP-led government that ended the 25-year uninterrupted Left rule.
The only concession that the BJP made to bring the IPFT on its side was to form a committee under the ministry of home affairs to examine the social, economic, cultural, and linguistic grievances of indigenous committees of Tripura. It is another matter that the committee never submitted any report.
Responding to a Right to Information (RTI) query by this correspondent in 2023, the MHA had said: “Since the work of this committee formed in September 2018 is yet to be completed, it is not in the public interest to disclose the sought information at this stage.”
Even as it remained a part of the government, with as many as five berths in the Cabinet, the IPFT saw its political base getting eroded as the Motha filled the vacuum created by the former nearly abandoning the core demand for a separate state. Motha repackaged the pitch as “Greater Tipraland”, which once again galvanised the tribals who saw a new hope in Debbarma, whose royal lineage added to his popular appeal.
That Debbarma is mindful of the IPFT’s predicament was clear from his statement to the media, made after the induction of Motha leaders in the Cabinet. “I have told our ministers that they should not commit IPFT’s mistake by remaining silent on issues that bother the tribals after joining the government. The nature of our politics will not change. They will now raise their voices inside the cabinet,” Debbarma told reporters.
After he was sworn into the cabinet Thursday, senior party leader Animesh Debbarma, too, said there would be no change in the party’s demand. “We will work towards achieving our goal,” he said.
Founded after Debbarma quit the Congress in 2019, Motha tasted a string of electoral successes, beginning with winning the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) polls in 2021.
In 2023, the party, which was ostensibly founded to address the grievances of indigenous communities of the state, had sprung a surprise by fielding as many as 42 candidates in the polls, going beyond the 20 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (STs).
The CPI(M) and the Congress, which fought the polls jointly, had accused Motha of working at the BJP’s behest to split the Opposition votes by fielding non-tribal candidates in unreserved seats. The results had shown that the Motha may have denied at least 18 candidates of the Left-Congress combine a victory by polling more votes than the winning margins of the BJP.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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