Agartala: Tripura Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Ratan Lal Nath has urged the legislators of the opposition bench to join the saffron party to learn the “Modi-art” of winning elections.
Nath, a senior member of the treasury bench, asserted that he was heavily inspired by the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which prompted him to join the BJP after serving the larger share of his political career in the Congress party.
“As soon as I came to know about the policies of PM Modi, I wasted no time joining the BJP”, the Minister said while responding to the CPIM MLAs during the ongoing winter session of the state assembly.
Alleging large scale poll rigging in the recently held Boxanagar and Dhanpur elections, CPIM MLA and party state secretary Jitendra Choudhury appealed to the treasury bench to reveal the secret art which led to the BJP’s victory with 90 percent of vote share in its favor in a constituency where the saffron it faced a decisive defeat a couple of months earlier.
“It’s Modi art”, Nath snapped back. “If you seek to grasp the art genuinely please join the BJP. Otherwise, there is no option available”, Nath told Choudhury.
The CPIM MLA launched a scathing attack on the state government while speaking against the motion of Governor’s address.
“The governor’s address prepared by the state government is a document of failure, betrayal and deprivation. This address is supposed to contain achievements of the state government in the past one year but if this whole written document divided in 92 paragraphs is analyzed point by point, nothing has happened for the welfare of the public”, added Choudhury. The law and order situation in Tripura has deteriorated to a scale that in the last 972 days 289 people were murdered, 62 incidents of bride killing were reported and altogether 280 women were kidnapped.
“Not only that, over 3,632 unnatural deaths have been reported. The number of rapes in this period stand at 422 incidents related to Crime Against Women also apparently increased with 1,682 total incidents along with 1,889 suicides”, Choudhury claimed citing written answers furnished by the Home Department in the state assembly.
The CPIM MLA also claimed that the number of state government employees decreased substantially after the BJP government came to power. “According to the budget at a glance report 2018-19, there were 1,58,852 total employees who used to draw salary from the state exchequer. It consisted of 1,13,852 regular employees while the rest of the 44,368 employees belonged to the contingency category.
Intriguingly, as per the budget at a glance report published on January 01, 2023 the total number of regular employees stand at 1,05,069 and the number contingency employees is found to be 35,516. The figures suggest that a drastic fall of 18,000 employees has been borne by the administration. As I am speaking today on this matter, several state government officials would have completed their tenure of job. Where are the jobs that were promised in the poll manifesto”, Choudhury asked.
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