BJP trying to incite tribals to demand separate state, says Manik Sarkar

Chief Minister of Tripura Manik Sarkar. (Express Photo)

The BJP has been trying to incite a section of Tripura’s tribals to raise the issue of a separate state the way Congress had done in the past, Chief Minister and Left leader Manik Sarkar said here on Friday.

“The BJP has been trying to get a foothold in Tripura by using a small section of tribal leaders to raise the demand for creation of a separate state. The Congress had also done the same thing years ago, and created the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS), with which it also formed a coalition government about 30 years ago. This time the BJP is trying to prop up the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) with the same demand,” Sarkar told The Indian Express.

He also pointed at the 11-day road blockade in Tripura called by the IPFT in July to press for creation of a separate state, and alleged that the NDA government had a role in it. “It has become increasingly clear that the BJP is trying to forge an alliance with the IPFT with an eye on the Assembly election,” he said.

Assembly polls in Tripura are due in February 2018.

“What the Congress did in the past is being repeated by the BJP now. They have adopted the same tactics as the Congress. Some groups had in the past raised the slogan of an independent state and tried to project the non-tribals as foreigners. But those ideas did not get much response,” Sarkar said.

“Thanks to our government’s special focus on development of the tribal areas, majority of the tribal people do not support such divisive ideas,” said Sarkar, who will be the Left Front’s chief ministerial candidate in the approaching polls. “The turnout in a rally organised by our tribal wing Gana Mukti Parishad on September 19 in Agartala proves that the majority of tribals are with us,” he said.

It was during a road blockade by IPFT supporters on September 20 that Shantanu Bhowmik, a journalist with a local news channel, was killed. “The journalist’s murder was unprecedented and must be condemned in the harshest possible words. It is an attack on the well-recognised right of a journalist to collect news. It is also an example of increasing intolerance. Whoever has done this must be condemned. The police are at work. Two persons have been already arrested,” he said.

The state BJP has dismissed Sarkar’s allegation as baseless. “It is the CPM which had created IPFT by causing a split in the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura in 2013 to split the tribal votes in the Autonomous Council election,” said Biplob Deb, president of BJP’s Tripura unit said.