The lone Congress MLA in Tripura, Sudip Roybarman, who won the byelection from Agartala last month after deserting the ruling BJP, on July 28 announced that his team in Congress has been working on to reduce the vote share of the BJP to 1.57 per cent in 2023 assembly elections.
Roybarman had been the main aggregator of BJP votes from Congress and CPI-M in the last election. He was health minister in the Biplab Deb-government.
Even after his “successful performance” in the ministry, Deb had dropped him suddenly from the cabinet after 13 months.
Allegedly, Roybarman was made inactive in the party and insulted by the leaders of the state BJP on several occasions and former chief minister Biplab Deb was accused of conspiring against Roybarman but BJP central leadership didn’t do anything to resolve the rift.
Finally, in February this year, Roybarman along with another BJP MLA Ashis Kumar Saha resigned from BJP and joined Congress.
Talking to the media, Roybarman claimed that the saffron party in Tripura is not going to come back rather they are gradually heading towards from where they started with 1.57 per cent votes in the 2013 assembly election.
“We jumped to BJP in a team and raised its vote share to 43 per cent in 2018 but in last four and half year’s performance BJP deserves to be a party of below two per cent vote and we shall do it,” he said.
The BJP leadership is aware that they have lost the support of the common people and that is the reason in the name of democracy and in an election they have been resorting to all unfair means and adopted terror tactics, Roybarman said adding that all likeminded parties would join hand for ousting BJP in Tripura in 2023 assembly election.
However, Tripura PCC chief Birjit Sinha claimed: “Tripura Pradesh Congress has begun its journey afresh after the return of both the stalwarts in Congress and reactivated the united movement of opposition parties against BJP in the state. In last five months, Congress re-gained its ground in the state and despite massive ragging and malpractices, Sudip Roybarman won the bypoll in an impressive margin.”
Sinha said as many as 28 leaders of BJP from eastern and southern constituencies of Agartala have joined Congress on July 27 and hopefully in the next couple of months a large number of Congressmen who had gone to BJP are intending to return including a sizable number of MLAs.
