As IPFT waits for clear BJP word on Tripura alliance, TIPRA Motha moves in, offers tie-up

Pradyot’s Party, TIPRA Motha, which was floated in February 2021 after he left the Congress in 2019, has been in power in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) since 2021.

“We have the same demand. What’s left in the name? N C Debbarma is not with us now… You will get nothing… Come forward and let us raise our voices jointly for thansa (unity). This is the right time for us to get united. I’m ready to fight under one symbol,” said Pradyot on Saturday’s Facebook Live. “Poor people want unity.It’s the right time to become united. If people’s hearts are broken by the leaders, God will never forgive us,” he said.

IPFT spokesperson Amit Debbarma said, “Senior leaders of our party will think over the offer. We’ll let everyone know about our decision soon.”

The TIPRA Motha had, once before, placed a unity or merger proposal to N C Debbarma, but the latter had then rejected it, even though the IPFT had signed an agreement to work with the Motha in 2021, shortly after the Motha was floated.

The IPFT was first conceived in the late 1990s over a demand for separate state for Tripura’s indigenous communities. The party split in 2004, giving birth to another indigenous party, the NSPT. Revived in 2009, N C Debbarma’s new IPFT took Tripura by storm with its ‘Tipraland’ demand in 2018, eventually winning 8 seats on its own and forming the government with the BJP, decimating 25 years ofcontinuous Left Front rule.

While Debbarma’s statehood demand propelled IPFT to power in alliance with BJP, the cause of a separate tribal state soon found a stronger anchor in royal scion Pradyot Debbarma, who floated TIPRA Motha in February 2021 on the same issue, albeit with a larger demand. Pradyot pushed his demand under the name of Greater Tipraland, which is essentially an extension of IPFT’s Tipraland, but involving places having Tripuri tribal habitations in Assam, Mizoram and otherNortheast states, along with parts of Bangladesh.

The IPFT has earlier come close to the Motha on two occasions — in 2021, when N C Debbarma and the then IPFT general secretary Mevar Kumar Jamatia, signed an agreement with Motha, saying the two parties would work together. At that time, the IPFT moved away soon after due to unexplained reasons. Soon afterwards, it became politically aligned with the BJP and remained against the Motha. Till now.

After N C Debbarma fell ill last year and Mevar Kumar Jamatia was elected Motha president at an organisational conference, he expressed a desire to work with the Motha. However, a still recuperating N C Debbarma soon returned to active political life, overturned the move to elect Jamatia as party chief and expelled him over allegations of colluding with the Motha.

All the while, the BJP refused to clarify its position on a future relationship with the IPFT, even as different saffron leaders have come out with different takes on alliance prospects.

Earlier in December, BJP spokesperson Nabendu Bhattacharya said BJP’s alliance with IPFT was still alive, without clarifying if it would continue. Separately, state BJP chief Rajeeb Bhattacharjee said his party would continue its alliance with the IPFT, though even he didn’t give out specifics of the alliance.

IncumbentIPFT general secretary and state Cabinet minister Prem Kumar Reangrecently said the BJP and the IPFT hadn’t finalised their alliancefor 2023, but since the parties were still in government, he expected the alliance to continue. While the IPFT awaits formal alliance discussions with the BJP, Motha’s open invitation for an unified statehood battle has opened floodgates of speculation inside the tribal party.