Ex-militant, 7 crorepatis, ‘poorest’ CM in race for Tripura Assembly

One is a tribal leader who was once among the most wanted people in the state...

One is a tribal leader who was once among the most wanted people in the state, another a former Maharani of the erstwhile princely state of Tripura. Seven of them are crorepatis, while another is said to be the poorest Chief Minister in India. But all of them have one thing in common, they are all in the race for a seat in the ninth state Assembly of Tripura.

Bijoy Hrangkhawl, contesting the elections for his third consecutive term as MLA, was once a ‘most-dreaded’ militant leader. He was the one, who as head of the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV), an armed separatist group, unleashed a reign of terror in the 1980s leading to a series of massacres, mostly of non-tribals.

Hrangkhawl, however, signed an accord with the initiative of Rajiv Gandhi and returned to the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS), which joined hands with the Congress and ousted the Left Front from power in 1988.

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No wonder that the ruling Left Front has described the INPT, an ally of the Congress party, formed following the merger of the surrendered Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) with the erstwhile Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS), a front for terrorists. Hrangkhawl and the Congress, however, dismiss this as a slur campaign with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking what was wrong if the Congress succeeded in bringing the misguided elements back into the mainstream.

With the Election Commission making it mandatory for candidates to declare their assets along with their nomination papers, voters in Tripura have also discovered that there were at least seven crorepatis in the contest.

“Leading the list is Subal Bhowmik, Congress candidate for the Sonamura Assembly seat, with total declared assets of Rs 17.88 crore. This is definitely amazing going by the overall economic condition of the state where over 66 per cent of the people live below the poverty line,” pointed out Pawan Rana of Tripura Election Watch (TEW), a platform of NGOs that have compiled various interesting backgrounds of the candidates. There are a total of 321 candidates in the fray.

Bhowmik has beaten even Bibhukumari Debi, who is revered in the state as a former Rajmata of the erstwhile princely state of Tripura. Bibhukumari, three-time MLA and one-time Lok Sabha MP, is the Congress candidate from Matabari in South Tripura. The PM himself campaigned for her two days ago. Going by her affidavit, the Rajmata has assets worth Rs 6.57 lakh, definitely not impressive going by Bhowmik’s assets.

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Interestingly, all seven candidates whose declared assets are more than Rs 1 crore belong to the Congress. Among them is former CM Samir Ranjan Barman, considered a strong contender if the Congress-INPT alliance manages to topple the Left Front on Saturday.

In contrast, the ruling Left Front has very carefully projected Manik Sarkar as the poorest Chief Minister in the country. Sarkar, whose father worked in a shop and mother was a government health worker, also donates his entire salary — about Rs 10,000 per month — to the party. In Tripura, which has been ruled by the Left Front for three consecutive terms, salary and wages of legislators and ministers incidentally are the lowest in the entire country.

“He has no land or house of his own. Nor does he own a car. His wife Panchali, who works in the Central Social Welfare Board, commutes to her office on a cycle-rickshaw,” pointed out Gautam Das, spokesman and chief campaign manager of the CPI(M). This is in sharp contrast to the huge assets declared by the Congress candidates, he added. In fact, if TEW’s compilation is taken into account, then the average declared assets of the Congress candidates stand at Rs 85.72 lakh. This is in sharp contrast to Rs 16.67 lakh of the CPI(M) and other Left Front candidates. “Only two of our candidates have assets a little over Rs 10 lakh,” Das added.