Manik Sarkar’s Turn To Go? Shah Preparing For Tripura Polls A Year In Advance

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has started preparing the ground for next year’s assembly elections in Tripura with its party president Amit Shah set to address a workers’ rally on 6 May in the northeastern state.

With memberships to the BJP increasing from 15,000 in 2014 to over 2 lakh this year in the state ruled by the Left Front for 24 years, the party will be hoping to capitalise on its growing influence and take on the Marxists on their home turf, a report in the Economic Times said.

Following Shah’s visit, four chief ministers – Raghuvar Das of Jharkhand , Sarbananda Sonowal of Assam, Pema Khandu of Arunachal Pradesh and Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh – will visit Tripura in the next two months, said Mrinal Kanti Deb, spokesperson for Tripura BJP.

BJP’s ministers will be central to the poll strategy the party will play out in the state. The ministers will visit the state to generate awareness among the people about the central government’s development programmes for the state and how the state government failed to implement them.

Apart from Kerala, Tripura is the only state where the communists are in power.