Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 16

Congress leader Sushmita Dev has joined the TMC at a time when the party is trying to expand its sphere of influence to Tripura to challenge the ruling BJP there when the Assembly elections are held in the north-eastern state in 2023.

Tripura TMC leader Subal Bhowmik said Sushmita’s joining the party was a welcome development which would give a boost to the TMC’s fight against the ruling BJP in Tripura.

“Sushmita’s late father Santosh Mohan Dev was instrumental in installing the Congress-led government in Tripura in 1988. Santosh Dev twice (1989 and 1991) went to the Lok Sabha from Tripura and five times from Assam’s Silchar,” Bhowmik, who along with several other Congress leaders quit the party and joined the TMC last month, said.

Santosh Dev went to Tripura at the instance of the then PM, Rajiv Gandhi, and successfully managed a victory in the state in the 1988 Assembly elections. TMC functionaries in Tripura capital Agartala, however, say Santosh Dev, who died in 2017, still has admirers in Tripura. They say the TMC will soon formally announce the organisational structure of the party in Tripura and Sushmita Dev will play a key role in it.