In Tripura West, a contest of redemption and poetic justice
Former Tripura Chief Minister and BJP candidate Biplab Kumar Deb campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in Tripura.
The outcome of the April 19 election to the Tripura West Lok Sabha constituency will be more than a battle of ballots for the two top contenders — BJP candidate Biplab Kumar Deb and Congress nominee Asish Kumar Saha.
A victory for Mr. Deb will be a redemption of sorts. He was seldom in the public space in Tripura after the BJP made him step down as the Chief Minister in May 2022, but rehabilitated him as a Rajya Sabha member.
A win for Mr. Saha, his party colleagues say, will be poetic justice as he quit as a BJP legislator in February 2022 after falling out with Mr. Deb. Mr. Saha, one of three MLAs who left the BJP following di¦erences with
Mr. Deb, eventually became the president of the Tripura Congress unit.
Groomed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for assignments across the country, Mr. Deb returned to Tripura in 2015 and was made the BJP’s State unit president the following year. He became the Chief Minister in 2018 after guiding the BJP to victory and ending 25 years of Left Front rule.
Mr. Saha won the 2013 Assembly polls on Congress ticket and shifted to the Trinamool Congress in 2016 and then to the BJP in 2017. He won the 2018 Assembly election as a BJP candidate and returned to the Congress four years later.
Strained relationship
The attacks on each other during the campaign underlined the strained relationship between the two.
“Some Congress leaders defected to the Trinamool over the Congress-Left Front alliance in Bengal. They quit the Trinamool and joined the BJP only to rejoin the Congress, which is an ally of the CPI(M) that loves China more than India and abhors Indian culture,” Mr. Deb said, referring to Mr. Saha.
Constituents of the Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), the Congress and the CPI(M) shared the two Lok Sabha seats in the State. While Congress elded Mr. Saha from the Tripura West seat, the CPI(M) elded Rajendra Reang from the Tripura East constituency.
Mr. Saha has also not held back. “The BJP should clarify why it wants someone who failed to run the Tripura government elected to the Lok Sabha,” he said at one of the campaign events.
The Congress also ridiculed the BJP for dropping incumbent Tripura West MP and Union Minister Pratima Bhowmik and opting for Mr. Deb. Ms. Bhowmik, however, said the party was above personal goals or ambitions.