Tipra Motha headed by Tripura’s royal scion, Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman, is contesting the Surma seat reserved for the Scheduled Caste. Bordowali, Agartala, Jubarajnagar and Surma are going to bypolls on June 23.
Tipra Motha won the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections last year. The council encompasses over two-third of Tripura’s 10,491 sq km area with a population of about 1.2 million people, of which 90% are tribals. There are around 20 assembly seats in the council areas while the tribal population has a sizable presence in several seats of the state. The state has 60 seats.
Rajeshwar Debbarma, political secretary to Tipra Motha chairman, told ET, “This is the first time we are contesting the assembly polls. We swept the council polls just within two months of our party’s formation. We will wrest the Surma seat. The party is building organisations across the state. We will contest around 45 seats in the next year’s assembly polls.” Surma seat was won by BJP in 2018. BJP’s ally in Tripura Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) is staring at a split. A section of the party is gravitating towards Tipra Tipra Motha .
Around 24 candidates, including Tripura chief minister Manik Saha, filed their nomination papers for the June 23 bypolls..
The chief minister is in fray from the Town Bordowali assembly constituency. The bypolls were necessitated after the resignation of three BJP MLAs and the death of CP-M legislator Ramendra Chandra Debnath. The votes will be counted on June 26.BJP along with ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura routed the Left Front in Tripura in 2018. In the 60-member Tripura assembly, BJP won 36 seats and IPFT eight while the CPIM, secured 16 seats.