BJP MLA and veteran tribal leader Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl, who resigned from the Tripura Assembly on Wednesday, along party leader Rajkumar Sarkar, and Trinamool Congress’ Rakesh Das on Thursday joined the Congress at a big rally organised by the opposition party to show its strength ahead of next year’s Assembly polls.
Hrangkhawl is the fifth BJP MLA and eighth MLA of the BJP-IPFT (Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura) ruling alliance to quit since last year.
Of thees eight legislators, three joined the Congress, four joined the Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA), headed by former royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman, while one joined the Trinamool Congress.
Addressing the rally, Congress in-charge for Tripura, Ajoy Kumar, said, “Some BJP leaders call Prime Minister Narendar Modi the father of the nation, others call Mohan Bhagwat the same… Tomorrow they will make Amit Shah another father of the nation. The BJP has so many fathers, but we have only one father of the nation – Mahatma Gandhi.”
He also urged people to defeat the BJP in the upcoming polls to protect the state, prevent atrocities against women and provide jobs to the youth.
Kumar then accused the BJP of giving money to the youth to join its ‘Bike Bahini’ to unleash terror and attack the opposition party leaders and workers.
Referring to Congress’ Bhrata Jodo Yatra, the bureaucrat-turned-politician said, “If Rahul Gandhi can walk thousands of kilometres, why can’t the party workers do the same.”
Addressing the rally, former BJP minister Sudip Roy Barman, who along with MLA Ashish Kumar Saha had jumped ship from the BJP to the Congress earlier this year, said that in the 2018 Assembly elections, people had given a chance to the saffron party to bring prosperity to Tripura, but it turned the state into a “den of addiction of drugs and liquor”.
Releasing a document of BJP’s ‘false’ promises made to the people prior to the 2018 Assembly polls, Roy Barman urged the gathering to give Congress a chance to serve the people.
Setting aside internal rifts, all the top state Congress leaders, including the party’s state unit chief Birajit Sinha, two former Tripura Congress chiefs, Samir Ranjan Barman and Gopal Roy, former MLA Ashish Kumar Saha, and Billal Mia were present at the rally.
