WITH Lok Sabha being dissolved and polls around the corner, hectic politiking has started across the nation. While on one hand the BJP and the Congress are firming up their alliances, the two national parties have also kickstarted their campaign. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and CPI (M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury have urged the electorate to vote for the Congress-led alliance to prevent division of votes and ensure NDA’s defeat in the next general elections. Mr. Sarkar and Mr. Yechury were unanimous in their views that to stop the NDA juggernaut, the Congress-led alliance and the Left-led alliance must enter into some type of arrangement to prevent division of votes. “It is paramount to stop NDA from coming back to power,’’ said Mr Yechury, who called upon the youth community to step up the pressure on the NDA. Mr. Sarkar also voiced similar concerns but blamed Congress for the upsurge of the NDA. “The North-East has been misruled by the Congress in the past five decades,’’ he alleged. “Except a brief interest shown by Deve Gowda ministry, no body has cared for the North-East. The NDA Government is even worse,’’ he alleged.

The Chief Minister further alleged that the NDA policies had led to high level of unemployment in the North-Eastern region. However, the Tripura Chief Minister urged upon the Centre to put more pressure on Bangladesh not to provide shelter to the North-East militants. “Tripura is suffering most from these camps as the ISI elements are very much active in the area using the porous boundary to make life miserable in the entire North-East,’’ he said. Interestingly, the NDA alone cannot be blamed for publicity stunts and sops ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The Tripura Government has announced a hike of 7 per cent Dearness Allowance (DA) for its employees with effect from April. Finance Minister Badal Chowdhury said with the new DA installment, the State Government employees would be getting total 45 per cent DA. Over 100,000 State Government regular employees would be benefitted, he added. The State Cabinet in its recent meeting also decided to release further installment of six per cent DA for the employees of public sector untertakings and autonomous bodies. Over 10,000 PSU and autonomous body employees will be benefitted, Mr. Chowdhury  said. 

The hike in DA would cost the State exchequer about Rs 67 crore annually, Mr. Chowdhury said adding that the government had also increased the wages of fixed-pay, daily workers, home guards and contingent workers. Approximately 22,000 workers would be benefited with this increase in wages. The State Government will also increase the rate of government advertisements for the local newspapers from April. Meanwhile, NDA has accepted Indigenous Nationalist party of Twipra (INPT) as its election partner. This put to an end, the ongoing speculations on rejection of INPT alliance proposal by BJP. However, the move has sparked off sharp reaction among the BJP parivar in the State. The decision was taken by BJP Vice president Pyarelal Khandelwal after a series of meeting with INPT leaders led by General secretary Rabindra Debbarma. BJP president Ranajoy Kumar Deb said that the INPT has promised to render support to NDA unconditionally and dropped their main demand of Inner Line Permit, Direct powers to TTAADC and candidate to the East Tripura Lok Sabha seat.

However, the state BJP chief was critical of the INPT for their suspicious nexus with banned ultras NLFT even after the alliance was declared. “ Even if INPT has now moved into the NDA fold, but there will not be any change on BJP views on INPT over the years. They must denounce NLFT and ATTF violence as a separatist move and Hrangkhawl must admit his mistake on ‘Geneva Speech’ “, he pointed out. “They should also withdraw their demand of eviction of non tribal settlers from tribal lands. As they have come on their own to the NDA , they must follow NDA guidelines and drop their own views”. Commenting on INPT demand on autonomy to TTAADC, he asked,” what autonomy when there were no remittance of utilisation certificate by TTAADC over the years?

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