East Tripura MP's absence from membership drive embarrassing BJP

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, November 4, 2024

The absence of East Tripura MP Kriti Singh Debbarman from the party’s membership drive has put the ruling BJP into an embarrassing situation. After winning the elections from East Tripura with a record margin of votes, she was last seen during the August floods. Since then, no one has heard of her presence in the state.

Even during the Durga Puja and Deepavali festival, she was reportedly in her home state at a time when leaders of her own party were busy making public contact. Sources in the BJP said that she had never been accepted by the saffron camp as an integral part of the party as no matter what comes in the way she would always stand for the party her brother had founded—Tipra Motha Party—of course an ally of the BJP. “She might be a BJP MP, but at the state level, she is always being considered as a Tipra Motha leader. It is the political base that her brother created helped her win the elections, and to date, her brother is filling up the void she had left. But the culture of BJP is different, and she might not really fit into that set of things,” a source in the BJP has said.

According to the BJP leaders who had publicly supported the alliance between Tipra Motha and the BJP, she is just a titular character as everything that she would have wanted is being put forth before the party top brass by her brother. She didn’t even turn up to attend the membership drive of the BJP, which is slated to end on November 15. A quick glance at her official social media handles showed that in between the window of August 17 to September 14, she was in Tripura and attended a slew of events. She met the leaders of her party, Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha, chaired meetings and also visited some of the flood affected areas but after that her social media handle is full of greetings and wishes on the festivals followed one after another. When all senior leaders of the party renewed their party membership and actively participated in the membership drive to qualify for the “active member” tag, she didn’t even bother to reach Tripura and have herself registered as a member of the party. On being contacted, a source in the Pradesh BJP said, “We don’t really know whether she had registered herself as a member of the party or not. We don’t have any information about that.”