Confident of Tripura win: Karat

Says CPI(M) has shortlisted candidates and the names will be declared next week

Prakash Karat

Expressing confidence of a win in the Tripura Assembly elections, CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat said here on Friday that that the Left Front was the most consistent and effective in countering the BJP and the communal forces.

“The New Year will begin on a reassuring note that the Left is the only consistent and effective counter to the BJP and the communal forces,” Mr. Karat said.

The State will go to the polls on February 18. This is the first time the CPI(M) will be locked in a direct contest with the BJP since the formation of the latter. This comes at a time when all the Opposition leaders, including from the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, have shifted loyalties to the BJP.

While the BJP polled merely 1.54% of the votes in 2013, it is the lead Opposition party in the State now. The CPI(M) has been ruling the State since 1993, and in the 2013 elections, it won 50 of the 60 seats.

Intensive campaign

Mr. Karat said the Left party had “redoubled” its efforts with more public meetings than during any elections in the past. Senior Left leaders would be campaigning extensively in the State.

“We have been carrying an intensive campaign, reaching out to remote tribal villages, warning people of the disruptive tactics of the BJP,” Mr. Karat said.

The party has shortlisted its candidates for the polls and will declare it next week.

Senior CPI(M) functionaries said they were sure of winning at least 30 seats and were hoping that it would help them form a government.

With the BJP expected to announce an alliance with the tribal outfit Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura in the coming days, Mr. Karat said: “IPFT in the past few months has taken out agitations which spurred violence.

They have always been a separatist organisation, now they have tweaked their demand and are asking for a separate State within India, which practically spells destruction of Tripura.”

Mr. Karat said that the biggest achievement of the CPI (M) in the past 25 years was to ensure unity among the tribal and the non-tribal population of the State and to end insurgency.

“It was the CPI(M) government that fought to amend the Constitution to enable the tribal autonomous district council, which covers two-third of Tripura,” he said.

He said the “money” and the “resources” that BJP has been pouring in the State has been worrying.