Agartala: Tripura’s ruling BJP on Thursday claimed that a few CPI-M MLAs have been in contact with them and the political landscape of the state would become more favorable to it soon.
State Information Minister and BJP leader Sushanta Chowdhury said the main opposition CPI-M was “frustrated” because of large-scale defections from its ranks to the ruling party and the growing popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s progressive policies.
“Some CPi-M MLAs, who are not at all happy with (leader of the opposition) Manik Sarkar, were in contact with the BJP. They can’t speak with Sarkar for his vanity. They say Sarkar can’t accept the rise of others and wanted to work under BJP. In due course CPM and Sarkar will realise the reality,” Chowdhury added.
In 25 years of its rule, the CPI-M (which led the Left Front government from 1993 to 2018) – could not even have imagined the sort of development that has been achieved by the BJP-IPFT regime under Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb.
Now, nobody is found queuing in the party offices for getting the benefit of development schemes or a government job, Chowdhury claimed.
“Everything is transparent and merit driven with logical connotation and that’s the biggest challenge for communists. During their regime, even a simple administrative work was not done without getting connected with their leaders, but today this government changed the tradition,” Chowdhury said.
Chowdhury’s statement came after former Chief Minister Sarkar accused the Prime Minister of giving a misleading speech during his Tuesday trip to the state on January 4.
Sarkar on Wednesday told the media that Prime Minister Modi had made an “untruthful” statement accusing the erstwhile Left Front government of having pressed the brake on the wheels of development while speeding up the vehicle of corruption before the formation of the BJP government.
Justifying his claim, Sarkar said, “The demand for inclusion of semi-permanent structure into the eligibility for PM Awas Yojana was raised by us in 2011 and after Modi became Prime Minister I sought his attention on several occasions to change the criteria. But then he was mum and now he is giving credit of success to the BJP government in the state”.
“Similarly, when (Road Transport and Highways Minister)Nitin Gadkari came to lay the foundation of Agartala-Sabroom National Highway, In 20017, I demanded sanctioning of six more National Highways for the state. He made the commitment and today it’s happening.
“We forced the Central government to increase the railway fleets connecting all important cities including Rajdhani express from here, railway connectivity with Bangladesh and working for Maitree Setu over River Feni connecting South Tripura with Chittagseaportport was our project, which THE Prime Minister forgot today but people of the state Still remember this history,” Sarkar pointed out.
The previous Left Front government had demanded an increase in the frequency of flights since the time when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister of India. There were flights between Kolkata and Agartala. “The state government put pressure to start flights between Agartala and Delhi became operational via Kolkata and Guwahati and had made it happen,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chowdhury said Sarkar was misguiding the people. instead of accepting the truth and alleged that CPI-M had played politics in the distribution of PMAY house to the people and there was an institutional form of corruption about which Manik Sarkar remained silent, and instead indulged his party leaders “to loot public fund and cheat the people” through several Ponzi firms.
