BJP’s Tripura CM face Biplab Deb: Trained by RSS, this former gym instructer has a no-nonsense image

Biplab Kumar Deb, 48, could be the next chief of minister of Tripura, two BJP leaders privy to internal deliberations said. He is currently the president of Tripura BJP and is leading against his CPM rival in Banamalipur assembly constituency in Agartala.

The BJP has brought to a close the 25-year-long communist rule in Tripura and ended the uninterrupted 20-year long stint of Manik Sarkar as the chief minister.

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“He is the front runner for the CM’s post and our pre-election surveys showed he had a popularity rating higher than Sarkar’s,” a BJP general secretary said.

“He worked closely with the BJP and the RSS to end the CPM’s hegemony in Tripura. He is an organisational man, trained in the RSS, and has a no-nonsense image in the BJP,” another office bearer of the BJP said.

Deb, a former volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has worked as a professional gym instructor in Delhi when he shifted to the national capital about 15 years ago for higher studies. Sunil Doedhar, the BJP’s prabhari for Tripura, was Deb’s trainer in the RSS and the veteran, KN Govindacharya, his mentor in the outfit.

Deb also worked as an assistant to Ganesh Singh, the BJP’s MP from Satna Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh, before moving to Tripura in 2016 as the party president there. Deb’s wife is a deputy manager with the Parliament House branch of the State Bank of India and they have two children.

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The decision to send him to Tripura was a calculated move by the BJP. Deb was young as well as a ‘local face’. It was believed that he could power the BJP’s bid to dislodge the CPM along with the help of strategists such as national general secretary, Ram Madhav, who comes from an RSS background, and Himanta Biswa Sarma, the former Congressman who is now the BJP’s main pointsman for the northeast.

There was a proposal to appoint him as the CM-face of the BJP in Tripura, but the party’s national president shot it down, asking the party to first win the election and then discuss who would become chief minister.