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Tripura minister says Left MLAs live in India but keep ties with Pakistan, China

Ratan Lal Nath says the CPM state chief couldn’t contest the poll from an ST seat despite being a tribal leader himself because the communists had lost their tribal support base.

tripura assembly protestOpposition CPM and Congress MLAs protest in the Assembly as Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ratan Lal Nath speaks on Monday. (Photo: Debraj Deb)

Tripura Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ratan Lal Nath trained guns at the Opposition CPM in the Assembly on Monday, urging it to be “nationalist” first and “Khargevaadi communist party” later.

“(You should) Love India. You live here but keep relations with Pakistan and China. Love the country… Be a nationalist before everything else. Become Khargevaadi communist party later,” the BJP leader said of the CPM, which fought the Assembly polls in a partnership with the Congress, which is led by president Mallikarjun Kharge nationally.

During a discussion on the motion of thanks to Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya’s address delivered on March 24, Nath recited verses from former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poem “Bharat Zameen Ka Tukda Nahin” and said that BJP legislators thought about the country and society first “unlike the CPM”.

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Nath also made jibes at CPM state secretary and legislative party leader Jitendra Chaudhary saying he could not contest the poll from an ST-reserved seat despite being a tribal leader himself because the communists had lost their tribal support base.

“That is why the Left did not get any tribal seat. The Left legislative party leader himself did not have the courage to contest a tribal seat despite being a tribal leader,” Nath said.

Festive offer

The minister said the communists were trying to woo TIPRA Motha chief Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, “an intelligent, smart boy” who he said would just play along with them.

Nath said India was well on its way to becoming “vishwaguru” under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that the state was on a similar path, as detailed in the governor’s address.

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“Tripura has over a Rs 1.40 lakh per capita income instead of the national average of Rs 51,000-plus. It has got 59 per cent families with safe drinking water connections instead of 3 per cent till 2017. As many as 10,868 lakh farmers are covered under the Fasal Bima Yojana. PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana benefits are available for them and 89,000 farmers get benefits of paddy procurement at a minimum support price. As many as 94,000 pregnant and lactating mothers got nutritional benefits in the past five years. These are all possible because of PM Modi’s guidance and support,” he said.

The BJP minister said that people did not accept communist ideology anymore and that those who “are committing a mistake today” should see reason.

Nath, who was a Congress leader for over four decades before joining the BJP in 2017, said he had respect for Congress legislators Gopal Chandra Roy and Birajit Sinha and urged them to leave the company of the communists, whom he called “mean-minded” .

BJP MLA Jitendra Majumder said the allegations of post-poll violence raised by Chaudhary were baseless.

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The CPM, which ruled Tripura for 25 consecutive years till 2018, lost to the BJP in 2018 and sat in the Opposition. But in 2023, TIPRA Motha became the main Opposition party with 13 MLAs in the 60-member Assembly as the Left Front and the Congress won 11 and 3 seats respectively.

The BJP won 32 seats while its alliance partner, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura, got one seat.

First uploaded on: 27-03-2023 at 18:40 IST
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