Left Front fields MLA Bhanulal Saha for lone Rajya Sabha seat in Tripura

Alleging that saffron party activists were killing Left supporters at a time when the Left Front was still in power, Baidya said in December 2017, “If you have to stay in Tripura, you have to follow democratic values and cultural values of the state. Or else, we shall pay you back to the very last penny before the cabinet is formed after the 2018 Assembly elections.”

She also predicted the BJP’s loss in the polls and made indirect threats to BJP workers saying Biplab Kumar Deb, who later went on to become chief minister, would return to Delhi after elections but his party workers would have to stay in Tripura–an oblique threat that they would be left behind to face the Left activists’ wrath.

As expected, Baidya’s name was not pitched a second time for the Rajya Sabha seat. Other Left Front allies – the CPI, Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party have supported Saha, who was part of the Manik Sarkar government, as the front’s candidate.

Announcing his party’s nomination, CPM state secretary Jitendra Chaudhury said Saha would file his nomination paper on Saturday or a day later.

On the state budget, the CPM leader said the tall promises made in the BJP’s 2018 “vision document” were not fulfilled even in the government’s last budget. He termed the budget as “unorganized and directionless” and alleged that receipts shown in the estimates did not match with the expenditure.

Chaudhury said the budget had failed to regularise contractual employees and offer Seventh Pay Commission benefits, as promised before the 2018 polls. He demanded the increased social security pension be given retrospective effect from March 2018. Raising the pension to Rs 2,000 was one of the BJP’s poll promises in 2018.