In bid to strengthen the Trinamool Congress’ organisational base and test the political waters in Tripura party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee is likely to visit Agartala on November 22, party sources said.
He is likely to address some rallies in the Tripura capital ahead of the November 25 municipal corporation elections there. The TMC is contesting from all the 51 seats in Agartala. Senior TMC leader who left the party before Bengal elections to return to it a week ago said that the Agartala municipal elections was “the first exam outside Bengal” and the party was confident of putting up a good show in the elections.
“We are under attack by the BJP goons who are not letting us to fight the elections because they know that the ground beneath Biplab Deb’s (Chief Minister) is fast slipping out … they know that they will lose the elections if the vote is free and fare … so they are using the goons and the police against us … but the TMC is determined to fight back … we have done so in Bengal led by Mamata Banerjee … we will do so in Tripura too,” Rajib Banerjee said.
Earlier Abhishek Banerjee who is also the nephew of Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that “we will repeatedly come back to Tripura till we have overthrown the BJP Government here … and the BJP workers who are today attacking our men will tomorrow come to join the TMC … I promise to take them in and make them serve the people of Tripura by holding their feet.”
The Left Front leadership however said that much like Bengal the BJP and the TMC were engaged in a “shadow fight” whereby the “BJP is making grounds for the TMC so as to break the Left vote base … but the people of Tripura are intelligent enough to read into their schemes…”
According to sources the BJP men were forcing the opposition Left, Congress and TMC candidates to withdraw their candidature an allegation rejected by t he BJP.