Tripura assembly elections 2023: Home Minister Amit Shah unhappy over ‘factionalism’ within state BJP

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has expressed resentment over 'factionalism' within Tripura state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has instructed leaders to refrain from doing so in the future, said reports.

The development comes after the top Tripura BJP leaders led by Chief Minister Manik Saha attended a high-level meeting on December 11 in Delhi convened by Shah to resolve the factional feud in the state BJP and to formulate the strategies for the upcoming assembly election.  

Besides BJP national president JP Nadda, party’s Tripura president Rajib Bhattacharjee, Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma, Union Minister Pratima Bhowmik, Rajya Sabha MP and former Tripura CM Biplab Kumar Deb also attended the meeting. 

According to reports, central leaders of the BJP have expressed a lot of resentment toward the factional politics in the Tripura BJP as well as their lobbying. 

It is worth mentioning that after Biplab Kumar Deb was ousted from his position as chief minister in June of this year, the BJP in Tripura has been experiencing a crisis of groupism. 

The reports also claimed that Manik Saha and his successor, have been experiencing resistance from a group of party leaders, the bureaucracy, and the cabinet. 

Deb, a former chief minister of Tripura, and Pratima Bhowmik, a union minister, are reportedly running a parallel administration within the BJP in the state and influencing the administration against Manik Saha, the current chief minister.

Following such development, Amit Shah and BJP national president JP Nadda, have also given specific instructions to the leaders to stop factionalism in the party and work together to fight the opposition democratically and win the elections.

Shah pleaded with the CM to swiftly bring an end to the violence, attacks on the opposition, and deteriorating state law and order in an expression of his displeasure.

According to the sources, a number of BJP survey reports have predicted a disastrous outcome in the assembly elections and suggested a number of measures, such as changing candidates for ministers and sitting MLAs in more than 25 per cent of seats.

Also read : Tripura BJP forms committees for 2023 polls