Rajya Sabha MP and former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Saturday sounded confident of the ruling BJP bettering its seats tally in the 2023 Assembly elections. While speaking to the media in Agartala, he said the BJP had worked for the welfare of the people by developing infrastructure; increasing the state budget, tax revenue, gross state domestic product and per capita income; tackling the Covid-19 pandemic; and providing jobs to IIIT graduates. “The CPM did not do anything as they lacked plans. They have only one plan: to collect subscriptions online. We are confident of winning more seats in the 2023 polls,” he said. However, he identified the CPM as the BJP’s main competitor, adding that “rises and falls keep happening”. Deb did not comment on the Congress’s prospects but said in an oblique reference to the TIPRA Motha party, “Whether it is Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra, Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) or others, regional parties are formed with specific responsibilities…at different times, you all have seen their faces. The people of Tripura know it and leaders of those parties know it as well.” Deb alleged that only 38,000 rural houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and 2.4 per cent water connections were allocated during CPM rule while the BJP provided 2.35 lakh houses and over 50 per cent water connections. Replying to a question on the possibility of his fighting the 2023 polls from his own constituency of Banamalipur, he said that whatever decisions that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP chief J P Nadda took would be good for the Northeast state. The BJP won the 2018 polls by securing 35 seats while the IPFT, its ally, got eight seats. Seven ruling MLAs have since quit and joined the Congress, Trinamool Congress and TIPRA Motha.
