Mamata leaves for Tripura to bolster TMC's stock

Aiming to expand the base of Trinamool Congress outside West Bengal, party chief Mamata Banerjee today left for Agartala in Tripura where she would address a rally to be attended by dissident Congress MLAs.
The Trinamool Congress has already carved a place for itself in the Marxist bastion emerging as the principal opposition party after six dissident Congress MLAs had joined it last June.
Sudip Ray Barman, who led the Congress dissidents in the sensitive Northeastern state, told PTI, "Mamata Banerjee's rally at the Swami Vivekananda Maidan in Agartala tomorrow will be the first nail in the coffin of the corrupt and inefficient Left Front government of Tripura."

Barman said that Banerjee would give the Tripura unit 'direction' to emerge victorious in the next Assembly poll due in 2018.
"All MLAs and other leaders who have joined the TMC from other parties, including the Congress, will be present in the rally. It will be a historic rally," he said.
Barman said the people of Tripura had become fed up with the Left Front regime and disapproved of the tie-up between the Congress and the Left Front in West Bengal.

"With this, the tacit understanding between the Left Front and the Congress came out in the open. Why then will people vote for the Congress as an alternative to the Left Front in Tripura?" he wondered.

If the Left is to be ousted from Tripura, Trinamool Congress is the best option because it is the only "anti-dote for the Left", Barman said.
After her landslide victory in West Bengal, Banerjee and her trusted lieutenant Mukul Roy have been working to expand her party's influence in the Northeast with Tripura being the prime target. The Bengali population there forms the largest ethno-linguistic group in the state with nearly about 70 per cent of the population.
According to TMC sources in Kolkata, Tripura and the Northeast hold a key to TMC's pan-India political ambition with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha poll where TMC wants to play a vital role.

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TMC vice-president Mukul Roy, who is overseeing the preparation for Banerjee's visit to the state, told a press conference later in Agartala that the days of the CPI-M government were numbered.
He said that he had no doubt that there would be a change of government after the Assembly election scheduled to be held in March, 2018.
Roy alleged that law and order machinery had collapsed in the state and people had no safety and security of their lives.
"Development has come to a halt in Tripura. The youths are unemployed and farmers are getting poorer. There is no industry and lack of political will of the government has doomed the future of students," he said promising that after the change of government TMC would work for development.