Two days after CPI(M) drops Tripura MLA Mabashwar Ali from candidate list, he joins BJP with ex-MLA Subal Bhowmik

Among the two new joinees, Ali joined BJP for the first time while Bhowmik was BJP’s Tripura vice-president before he quit the party and joined Congress before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Bhowmik won his only Assembly election from Sonamura Assembly constituency with a Congress ticket in 2008. He started his political career with the Congress, formed his own party (Tripura Pragatisheel Grameen Congress), moved on to Trinamool Congress, shifted to BJP, left the party to return to Congress, then moved to Trinamool Congress and now returned to BJP.

Sambit Patra welcomed both leaders, saying, “Both of them are educated people and have joined BJP seeing development activities of PM Modiji.”

Ali said on Friday that he wanted to be associated with the development works of the BJP-led NDA government. “Many development schemes on safe drinking water, housing and other benefits are provided by PM Modiji. Far-flung villages of Tripura would get benefits from these schemes like the rest of the country. I wanted to be associated with these programmes and appealed to the BJP, to which they agreed,” he said.

Bhowmik said North East India got recognition across the country due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said unforeseen development was ushered in the NE region under PM Modi compared to all previous regimes. He also said that all northeast states have BJP-led governments and said he was confident BJP would return to power for a second term under PM Modi’s leadership.

Ali won from Kailashahar Assembly constituency in 2018 with 4,834 votes more than BJP candidate Nitish De. He is a political science graduate and had been associated with the Communist party for several years. Sources in the CPI(M) said he was peeved at not being given a ticket to his home turf. However, the Kailashahar seat was originally the home turf of state Congress president and former MLA Birajit Sinha, who was defeated in 2018, after a lion’s share of the party’s rank and file shifted to BJP in 2017.

Often credited with good organising skills and criticised for political restlessness, 57-year-old Bhowmik is a political veteran in Tripura with a career of over 50 years to his credit. He has been a Congress leader since the late 1970s. He once switched parties to join Trinamool Congress in 1999, when former chief minister Sudhir Ranjan Majumder joined the party and debuted its Tripura chapter. However, the effort failed to make any real change and Bhowmik, like many others with him, returned to Congress.

In 2008, Bhowmik contested and won from Sonamura Assembly constituency on a Congress ticket. Since Assembly seats of the state underwent delimitation before the 2013 polls, Sonamura constituency had major changes in its demographic composition and Subal lost in the 2013 Assembly elections, prompting Subal to leave Congress and formed Tripura Pragatisheel Grameen Congress.

He later blamed the Congress high command for the party’s defeat in 2013 Tripura Assembly polls and said that the party would never come to power in Tripura in the “next hundred years” with the then Congress leadership at the helm of affairs.

He joined BJP in 2014, was named vice-president of the party’s state committee and underwent RSS training. Political experts say he was crucial in building the saffron party’s base during this time till former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb came in and took over the reins of the party.

Bhowmik further changed parties in 2019, when he joined Congress, a few weeks before the Lok Sabha election. He contested in the parliamentary polls with a Congress ticket but lost. He later shifted to Trinamool on July 30, 2021. Bhowmik was dropped from the post of TMC president last year after the Bengal-based party’s vote share fell below 3 per cent from 16.39 per cent in the 2021 civic body polls.

Meanwhile, the Tripura Left Front on Friday revised its candidate list and announced that former minister Manik Dey was replaced by Sanjay Das at Majlishpur Assembly constituency and former minister Aghore Debbarma was replaced by Dilip Debbarma at Asharambari constituency in a reshuffle to relieve the two ex-ministers who were unwell.

Advocate Partha Ranjan Sarkar was announced as the Left Front partner Forward Bloc’s candidate from Badharghat Assembly constituency. While CPI(M) had declared its candidates two days back, its Left Front allies were yet to name their candidates.