Tripura ex-MLA after joining royal scion’s party: IPFT guardian-less, Motha only hope for tribals

“I contested the election on behalf of the IPFT in 2018 after starting my political career in 2014. I have been doing politics for eight years. Different parties may exist and different people may say different things. My aim is to cooperate with him. Twelve lakh Tiprasa are with him. I am just one of them,” the former legislator said.

Dhananjoy also said statehood demands put forth by the IPFT and the TIPRA Motha were more or less similar. He also said more leaders would join Motha from different parties and Longtraivalley, Karbook, Ompi and other parts of the state.

“An MLA post is a temporary one but the community is forever… There is no saviour for Tiprasa other than Pradyot Kishore. The IPFT might have worked as a regional party since 2009 but it is without a guardian now. Maharaj’s (Pradyot) Greater Tipraland aim deserves support and cooperation from all Tiprasa,” he said.

Former BJP MLA Burbu Mohan Tripura and former IPFT MLA Brishaketu Debbarma had earlier joined Motha. Dhananjoy is the third IPFT MLA to have joined Motha, considered a major political force in the tribal seats. Twenty out of the 60 seats in the Assembly are reserved for scheduled tribes, and tribal voters are a determining factor in 10 others. The ruling combine now has 41 MLAs–35 from the BJP and six from the IPFT.

Motha supremo Pradyot said malicious propaganda was being spread against his party. “We are not against any community but are only speaking for our own rights. It is a reality that the ADC was not developed. But people outside ADC were not developed in many cases as well,” he said.

Prior to Motha, most regional tribal parties and underground outfits had adopted a hardline approach to ethnic politics. These include the rebellious tribal movements such as the Tripura National Volunteers, which surrendered in 1988 and came overground. The outfit’s former supremo Bijoy Hrangkhawl is now president of Motha.

Armed tribal insurgency, which swelled in the 1980s, made way for a democratic political movement for tribals at the fag end of the last millennium, partly due to lucrative surrender packages and intensive counter-insurgency operations.

But tribal parties such as the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra, the National Conference of Tripura and the IPFT still make exclusive demands.

Despite his party’s separate tribal statehood demand, Pradyot is trying to bring together the tribal and non-tribal communities, which share a history of tension, even a riot in June 1980. He signalled as much when he fielded a non-tribal, Baburam Satnami, as the party candidate for a bypoll four months ago.

Pradyot used Dhananjoy’s arrival to drive the message home that the erstwhile royal family had good relations with non-tribal people, including Rabindranath Tagore and Jagadish Chandra Bose. “We have never had a communal outlook. But today Tiprasa needs to talk about their constitutional rights. Our demands are given a communal colour. Tiprasa is talking about our rights, not against anyone,” he said.

Pradyot also took potshots at the BJP. “There are some people peddling Hindu-Muslim conflict. Hindus are not getting fed by targeting Muslims. Nor are Buddhists benefiting from targeting Christians. Roads, schools and healthcare have to develop,” he said.”If law and order cannot be maintained, why would people come here and invest? That is the primary role of the government.”