In 56 years Tripura has seen dozen-plus tribal parties, but none survived

By Sujit Chakraborty

Agartala, Jan 29 (SocialNews.XYZ) For the past over five-and-a-half decades, tribal based parties in Tripura tried to play a crucial role in the state's politics but due to their issue based politics sans any ideology they became nonexistent after their issues were resolved or when they raised irrelevant demands.

In June 1967, the Tripura Upajati Juba Samity (TUJS) was formed as the first tribal based political party raising some tribal centric demands including creation of the tribal autonomous body.

After the TUJS, over a dozen tribal based political parties including Tripura Hills People's Party, Tripura National Volunteers (a militant outfit turned political party), Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), Tipraland State Party (TSP), Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), National Conference of Tripura (NCT) have been created but over the years these parties suffered a premature death or had to merge with other parties.

In 2002, the TUJS and the TNV merged with the INPT and last year the INPT merged with the new tribal based party Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance's (TIPRA) led by former royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman.

The IPFT, since 2009, has been demanding to make the areas under the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) a full-fledged state while the TIPRA, since 2021, has been demanding elevation of the TTAADC areas by granting a 'Greater Tipraland State' or a separate state under Article 2 and 3 of the Constitution.

The ruling BJP, CPI-M led Left parties, Congress and the Trinamool Congress have been strongly opposing the demands of both the IPFT and the TIPRA. The two parties in support of their demands organised agitations both in the state and in the national capital Delhi.

While all the parties in Tripura - BJP, CPI-M, Congress and Trinamool Congress -- have been trying to forge an alliance with TIPRA for the February 16 assembly polls to get majority of the 20 vital tribal reserve seats, the latter has been trying to forge an alliance with the BJP's junior ally IPFT, who by focusing on the Tipraland issue secured eight tribal reserve seats in the 2018 assembly polls.

In the last elections (2018), the BJP and the CPI-M won 10 and two tribal reserve seats respectively though the tribal areas were the strong political bastion of the CPI-M since 1952.

The demand for a Greater Tipraland was raised by the TIPRA after the IPFT got massive support from the indigenous tribals ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections.

Since April 2021, TIPRA has been ruling the politically-important 30-member TTAADC, which has jurisdiction over two-thirds of Tripura's 10,491 sq km area and is home to over 12,16,000 people, of which around 84 per cent are tribals, making the autonomous council a mini-Assembly.

The TTTAADC was formed in 1985 under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution to protect and safeguard the political, economic and cultural interests of the tribals, who constitute one third of the state's four million population.

Political commentator Sanjib Deb said that tribal based political parties in Tripura were formed on the basis of certain issues and certain demands.

"These tribal parties have no ideology. According to our experience over the years they become nonexistent after their issues were got resolved or when they raised such demands which are practically not possible to implement," Deb told IANS.

Deb said that with the emergence of TIPRA a third political spectrum emerged in the state politics with the new tribal based party overwhelmingly dominating the tribal vote bank, thrashing the other political parties, specially the Left parties, who have had strongholds among the tribals since 1952.

"Earlier, the politics of Tripura was dominated by the Left and non-Left parties. Now the new entrant TIPRA is taking the vote share, mostly tribal votes, of the three national parties -- BJP, CPI-M and the Congress," Deb pointed out.

He said that most times the tribal based parties have to ally with the national parties despite their disputes on various issues.

In 1988-1993, the erstwhile TUJS was in the coalition government led by the Congress and in the current tenure (2018-2023), the IPFT is the junior partner of the BJP led alliance government.

With the electoral politics and reserved seat based political scenario gradually changing, the possible coalition prospects and related scenarios in the next month's assembly polls are still unclear as the political pundits see varied permutations and combinations emerging during the last few months.

The CPI-M led Left Front first came to power in 1978 securing 56 seats in the 60 member assembly while the remaining four seats, all tribal reserve constituencies, were won by the erstwhile TUJS.

The Left Front governed Tripura for 35 years (1978 to 1988 and 1993 to 2018) before the Left parties suffered a humiliating defeat by the BJP in 2018.

CPI-M's frontal organisation Tripura Rajya Upajati Ganamukti Parishad (TRUGP), which since 1945 expanded the Left base in Tripura, but over the decades its organizational strength has been weakened by a large extent.

The TRUGP, which was formed by the veteran tribal leaders led by former Chief Minister Dasaratha Deb, a father figure of the Communist movement in Tripura, is not a full-fledged political party.

(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)

Source: IANS