THE Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura, the tribal political party formed for fulfillment of the regional sentiments suffered a major setback with the party voted out of power in the TTAADC session on July 31 last. INPT took charge of the TTAADC on May 10, 2000 after sweeping 18 seats out of 28 seats in the elections, which was marred by large scale rigging and militant threat to the candidates and voters.

Little over three years, the party now finds itself in the opposition bench despite the fact that the party in the past three years had managed to rope in Tripura National Volunteers and Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (the first tribal political party formed in 1967) under one umbrella.

It was the TNV Chief Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawl and the then IPFT chief Harinath Debbarma who first mooted the idea of a common platform for the tribals other than the CPM tribal wing Tripura Ganamukti Parishad which led to the merger of the IPFT and TNV in July 2000.

By 2001, IPFT became the largest tribal based political party in the State after it managed to rope in with them the TUJS and changed it’s nomenclature to Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) and veteran tribal political stalwarts Shyama Charan Tripura and Rabindra Debberma joining the outfit.

But, the adage, “United we stand, divided we fall” perfectly matched them and ever since the INPT was formed, nothing was a smooth sail for the tribal party. The party not only failed to come out of the brand of a political party backed by militants but also failed to amalgamate a common agenda of the IPFT and TUJS leading to a total mess up.

The new generation leaders like Debabrata Koloy who does not have a good political record and his aides, who were new to the political professsion, dictated the terms sidelining the vast experience and opinions of leaders like Shyama Charan Tripura and Rabindra Debbarma is now dubbed as major cause of their downfall. The first signs of dissention surfaced in January 2002, when Harinath Debbarma, who was pivotal in forming IPFT and winning the ADC elections in 2002, raised his voice against the party functioning. He was later dismissed from the party and joined NCP.

 Dissentions among the party not only touched a new height but the number of defectors also increased. Veteran leaders like Pakshi Tripura (ex MLA), Kalpa Mohan Tripura and Gajendra Tripura left the party to join the NCP before the polls.

In the last assembly election, the INPT won one seat more than the previous figure which added to the speculations that the party would consolidate it’s position in the hills. But, the emergence of the breakaway group put chilled waters to all the speculations.

At the time, the IPFT came to power NLFT followed the diktats of the IPFT leaders. But, in the later days, things turned other way round. Some of the INPT members of the council became the stooge of the banned militant outfit. A sort of parallel government was run by the NLFT during the days of Debabrata Koloy and funds worth lakhs of rupees were diverted to the militants as alleged by the members of the council itself.

Sridam Debbarma who was a potential threat to Debabrata Koloy’s leadership was kidnapped by the NLFT to be released four months later. Mohan Reang who was later made the CEM succumbed to the pressure of the militants and relinquished his post and Debabrata Koloy reinstated as CEM again, only to witness the ugly division in the party. In the past three years developmental activities came to a standstill, drop out rate rose to all time high, tribal sentiments sidelined at whims and the ADC and state relationship reached loggerheads. The CPM leaders in the remote zonal and sub-zonal were eliminated by NLFT as raised their voices against the INPT functioning. .

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