Eye on Tripura polls, Abhishek Banerjee to lead TMC’s first Agartala roadshow

This is Abhishek Banerjee’s third visit to Agartala in two months. He will be accompanied by several members of Parliament and legislators from Bengal.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Friday announced that its national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee will lead the party’s first roadshow in Agartala on September 15; months after senior leaders started visiting Tripura and announced that they would oust the Biplab Deb-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the 2023 assembly polls.

During his last visit, Abhishek Banerjee told local leaders that organizational committees have to be set up right down to the polling booth level by December 31. (PTI PHOTO.)

The visit by Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew comes at a time when clashes are regularly taking place between workers of the BJP and the Communist Party of India, or CPI(M), who ruled the state from 1978 to 1988 and again from 1993 to 2018.

This is Abhishek Banerjee’s third visit to Agartala in two months. He will be accompanied by several members of Parliament and legislators from Bengal.

The Tripura assembly has 60 seats of which 43 are now in control of the BJP and its allies.

“Abhishek Banerjee will lead the roadshow. The BJP is intentionally attacking CPI(M) workers since last week to divert attention from the rise of the TMC. But the strategy will not work. We are fully sympathetic towards the CPI(M) workers and support their struggle. However, we urge them to vote for us and oust the BJP,” said TMC’s Bengal general secretary Kunal Ghosh.

During his last visit, Abhishek Banerjee told local leaders that organizational committees have to be set up right down to the polling booth level by December 31. I-Pac, the company formed by election strategist Prashant Kishor, is collecting data on the ground for the TMC.

Sushmita Dev, the former Congress Lok Sabha member from Silchar, Assam, who joined the TMC in August, is regularly touring the state where her father, former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev, held the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat.

Bijan Dhar, former Tripura state secretary of the CPI(M), told HT that by asking Left supporters to vote for the TMC, Bengal’s ruling party is making a mockery of the current situation.

“We are not opposed to any party holding rallies in Tripura but TMC leaders should not drag electoral politics into the current situation. They should have sympathy for our workers who are facing attacks every day. This is not the time to talk about elections,” said Dhar.

Subrata Chakraborty, spokesperson of the BJP Tripura unit, said the TMC can always hold rallies because democracy prevails in the state.

“Abhishek Banerjee is welcome to hold a roadshow because democracy prevails here. TMC leaders are claiming that it is going to be a historic event. We wonder if it will historically mark the end of TMC’s journey in Tripura like the three earlier occasions when it unsuccessfully contested the state polls. We know that TMC and CPI(M) have an understanding but people have faith in the governance and welfare measures of Biplab Dev,” said Chakraborty.

In Delhi, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar on Friday afternoon in protest against the political violence in Tripura.