Pratima Bhowmik, 52, is the first resident of Tripura to become a Union minister. She is among the senior-most leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state. A science graduate, Bhowmik joined the party in 1991 and has since held organisational positions in the state. She unsuccessfully contested assembly elections twice against Tripura’s longest-serving chief minister Manik Sarkar in 1998 and 2018. She became the first-term Member of Parliament from Tripura in 2019.
The daughter of a schoolteacher, Bhowmik has also been involved in farming in her native Baranarayan village in Sonamura. She also was a keen Kho-kho and Kabaddi and took part in the block, district, and state-level competitions.
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Triguna Sen, who was from West Bengal but represented Tripura in Rajya Sabha, was a minister in former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. Santosh Mohan Dev, a resident of Assam, contested Lok Sabha polls in 1989 from West Tripura constituency and became a minister in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet.