TRIPURA

Pro-Extremist Outfit Splits

MEETING its nemesis three years after it usurped the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC, or ADC in short) with the help of extremist guns in the May 2000 ADC elections, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) recently underwent a vertical split. On July 22, 7 out of a total of 18 ADC members belonging to the ruling INPT, including the ADC chairman Hirendra Tripura, formed a new political party under the name of National Socialist Party of Tripura (NSPT). With this development, the INPT has now lost its majority in the 28-member Autonomous District Council.

At present, there are 8 Left Front members and 1 independent member in the ADC, while one seat remains vacant as the Left Front member Manindra Reang was elected legislator from Santirbazar (ST) assembly constituency.

It will be noted that the INPT is the overground wing of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), an outlawed extremist organisation that has been responsible for the killing of hundreds of people in the state. The INPT fought the February 26 assembly polls in Tripura in alliance with the Congress party and had extended support to the latter in the Lok Sabha bypoll in Tripura West constituency last year. It is another thing that the Left Front trounced the Congress-INPT combine in that bypoll with a bigger margin than in 1999. The Left Front also gave a severe drubbing to the said combine in assembly polls in February this year and formed a government for the fifth time.

At 7.15 p m on July 22, seven ADC members led by the incumbent ADC chairman Hirendra Tripura met the governor, Dinesh Nandan Sahay, at Raj Bhavan in Agartala and handed him a written statement withdrawing support from the chief executive member of the ADC, Debabrata Koloi. In a conference held in Bhagat Singh Youth Hostel at Agartala at 8.00 p m, they announced the formation of a new party, the NSPT, with a 21-member ad hoc central executive committee. Gouri Sankar Reang has been named the NSPT president and Budhu Debbarma its general secretary.

At the press conference, Gouri Sankar Reang said the formation of his new party is a vehement condemnation of the all out corruption and collapse reigning supreme in the despotic ADC administration. This is what is hitting the backward tribal population of Tripura hardest, with all development work having come to a grinding halt despite normal allocation of funds by the state government over the past three years. He accused the INPT leadership of having totally betrayed the high hopes of tribal development with which the party had been launched.

Asked by newsmen as to how they proposed to form a new ADC administration with just 7 members, Gouri Sankar Reang replied that another three to four ADC members would shortly join their camp. Above all, since the formation of this new political party was aimed at protection of the time-tested ethnic harmony of Tripura and extermination of insurgency from the state, they would seek the support of the CPI(M), he added.

The development assumes significance in view of the fact that since the INPT usurped the ADC with the help of the NLFT guns three years ago, its functionaries in the ADC administration not only saddled it with unbridled corruption, it also turned it into a sponsor of NLFT extremists. This has led to a glaring exposure of the INPT to the people of the state, especially to the backward tribal people of the ADC areas, whose back was increasingly being pressed to the wall. This was a vital factor behind the electoral rout of the political-electoral alliance of the Congress party and the INPT in the February 26 assembly polls in Tripura. Moreover, ever since the formation of the fifth Left Front government in March this year, the state has been witnessing landslide erosion in the Congress-INPT combine’s rank and file who are coming forward to join the leftist camp.

The leadership of the newly formed NSPT stated clearly in the news conference that the party does not support the separatist demand for an “independent Tripura.” This is in sharp contrast to the fact that exactly one year ago --- on July 22 last year --- INPT president Bijoy Hrangkhawl, the father of all insurgency in Tripura, had openly supported the secessionist and outlawed militant organisations of Tripura and eulogised the militants as “freedom fighters” at a conference organised by a CIA-backed outfit in Geneva. Only a few days before the recent split, Hrangkhawl and the INPT thinktank Shyamacharan Tripura had left for Geneva to attend a conference hosted by the same organisation this year.

At their press conference, the newly formed NSPT’s members also reacted to the allegation that the Left Front had forcibly held 7 ADC members hostage under police custody to facilitate the formation of the NSPT. It was INPT general secretary Rabindra Debbarma who had made this allegation earlier on the same evening at a news conference held at the ADC’s old council building in Agartala. The ADC members of the newly formed NSPT told the newsmen that they had quit the INPT voluntarily and that it was the INPT leadership that had forcibly detained other ADC members who were eager to join their camp. The NSPT members emphatically affirmed that they were determined to restore peace in Tripura as well as provide an efficient ADC administration to the betrayed and backward tribal belts of the state. (INN)