In a significant political development, Tripura Units of CPIM and Congress formally started ‘alliance’ talks in Agartala on Friday (Jan 13) for upcoming State Assembly polls.
Earlier, CPIM Central Committee gave green signal for moving ahead with an electoral alliance with Congress – within a day, Congress Central leaders arrived in Agartala and announced party’s consent for the alliance.
At last, AICC State in-Charge Dr Ajoy Kumar and CPIM State secretary Jitendra Choudhury held a meeting in Agartala today. Both the leaders announced that further meetings would be held for seat sharing and chalking out poll strategies.
Kumar and Choudhury said the target of the alliance is to prevent anti-BJP vote splitting and defeat the ruling BJP in upcoming Assembly polls. Now, CPIM and Congress are looking at Tipra Motha to join in the alliance – although, Tipra Motha supremo is yet to give any final signal on this issue.
After West Bengal, Tripura is the other State where once foe – Congress and CPIM – have turned into a friend for the electoral benefits. In the last two successive Assembly Polls in Bengal, Congress and CPIM allied to unseat Trinamool Congress – but the experiment proved terribly wrong. Most importantly, after ruling Bengal for long 35 years, representation of CPIM in current Assembly became zero.
Even as the alliance in Bengal miserably failed to deliver, Tripura Unit of CPIM preferred to go ahead with the alliance with Congress. Many Political analysts of the State opined the alliance, like Bengal, will ruin the prospect of the CPIM, but may accrue benefits for Congress.
As CPIM is a cadre-based party, most of its supporters will abide by the Party’s command and are likely to work as well as vote for Congress candidates. This may help Congress candidates, in to some extent, in some of the constituencies. However, the reverse – that is Congress supporters would vote for CPIM – is a remote possibility, especially considering the long and bitter enmity between the supporters of the two parties.
According to some die-hard Congress supporters, after a long time, Congress organization was rejuvenating in Tripura – however, the alliance with the arch rival CPIM will not go down well with the grass root supporters. Many Congress supporters became victims of CPIM terror and many lost their relatives. It would not be possible for those supporters to and the party will fail miserably, once again.
It is not that Pradesh Congress leaders or the CPIM leaders are not aware of the resentment of the workers and failure of the Bengal model, however, both the parties have no other alternative against the BJP.
The ruling BJP is not giving much importance to the alliance between CPIM and Congress saying that they had secret understanding in the past which has come to fore now thorugh forging an alliance. People are not fool so the alliance will fail in Tripura.
