Agartala: Tripura Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma finally put an end to the suspense over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closed-door meeting with top party functionaries and MLAs at the state guest house before departing for Delhi on December 18.
While BJP leaders restrained from speaking anything over the issues, speculations had been making round that the PM had shown an interest in making an alliance with royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarman’s TIPRA which is ruling the TTAADC areas.
Ruling out possibilities of alliance talks with TIPRA, Dev Varma rubbished speculations and said that the meeting was completely an internal affair of the party. When asked about the reports published in local media linking the PM’s meeting with TIPRA’s prospects of alliance with BJP, Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma said, “All these issues are made-up stories. PM Modi’s meeting with the leaders of the BJP was related to the internal matters of the party and poll preparedness.”
On being asked about the negligible presence of Janajati people in PM Modi’s rally, Dev Varma said, “This statement was made by former Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. We have one MP, and 10 MDCs, and our workers are toiling hard in the ground. Why should we be bothered about other political parties? The CPIM must realize its own stand. It was in power in the ADC and now totally vanished from the hills.”
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Dev Varma also claimed that his party was capable of fighting polls sans TIPRA. However, top sources in the party informed EastMojo that less presence of the tribal people in the PM’s event has turned out to be a major embarrassment for the party in Tripura. “While in other states BJP is improving its grip on the indigenous dominated belts, here BJP’s strength has declined substantially. This issue was discussed but there was no direct instruction from the PM to initiate talks for the alliance,” a senior BJP leader said.
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