Tripura MlAs rebel against party high command
The grand old Congress party is once again hit by a severe crisis in its Tripura unit. In the 60 member-Tripura Assembly, Congress had 10 legislators till last week and now the party is left with only three. On Monday, Jitendra Sarkar two times Speaker of the Tripura Assembly who joined the Congress in 2010 announced that he is going back to his parent party, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). On Tuesday, six other Congress legislators joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) under the supervision of the party's senior leader and vice president Mukul Roy. The latter came to Tripura, which is the last bastion of the left today, where Manik Sarkar has been at the helm since March 1998 and will be completing his fourth term as a Chief Minister next year, to set up shop for the TMC which is hoping to form the next Government in 2018. Also he claimed that the TMC will now become the main opposition party in the State. This indicates that TMC is making grand plans for the 2018 Tripura Assembly election. It is also in constant touch with the top leaders of the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT). In Tripura, the dissident Congress MlAs brought to light that they quit after the party came in alliance with the left in the last Assembly poll in West Bengal.
The recent debacle in the Congress had started in Assam and then it spread to the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh and Tripura. In fact, the Congress rebellion in Assam continued for a long time under the leadership of one its most powerful Ministers, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and the party high command did not even meet the aggrieved legislators. Finally, Sarma led a group of eight legislators who joined BJP, and to a great extent, helped the latter win the recent Assembly election in Assam. This was a virtual replay of the events that ended Congress rule in Arunachal Pradesh, wherein once again the party top brass did not give an audience to the dissident group led by Kalikho Pul. Similarly, the Congress in Uttarakhand also came to be nearly uprooted, but somehow Chief Minister Harish Rawat has managed to hold on to his seat. In Meghalaya, the Congress rebels had accused Chief Minister Mukul Sangma of acting in a dictatorial fashion and taking decisions unilaterally. Then former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi announced his decision to part with the party.
This reflects the high handedness of 10 Janpath while taking decisions and mostly without consulting the regional satraps. It is true that the Congress maintains a dominating relationship with its regional leaders, even if it costs the party at large but not the Gandhi family and its cronies for the time being. last but not the least, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s current spiritual healing touch from the Brahma Kumaries, shows how his family particularly and the party in general, are badly in need of introspection followed by immediate action.