With the VC elections drawing nearer, political leaders of rival parties have ramped up their verbal jibes at each other as the Tipra Motha-BJP alliance becomes a fresh flashpoint of controversy.

Power Minister Ratan Lal Nath, who has been entrusted with the task of strategising for the polls and handling the alliance mechanism between the BJP and Tipra Motha, on Monday called the communists an ‘anti-national’ force and asserted that the primary goal of the electoral understanding between the BJP and Tipra Motha was to prevent the CPI(M) from gaining any electoral advantage.

“I consider communists as anti-national and hence all our allies have reached a consensus that not an inch of land should be left for them. In that case, no compromise. Wherever Tipra Motha and BJP have entered into a friendly contest, we have a different equation, and wherever either of the parties are fighting against CPI(M), our workers have to make sure that the Left gets defeated,” said Nath.

He was interacting with the media on the broader electoral goals of the ruling alliance under the NDA (National Democratic Alliance).

“The Congress is fighting in a few seats. The CPI(M) is the primary electoral rival here. I don’t see the party having any substantial prospects for the ensuing polls. The former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition are making tall claims for the sake of politics, but they are ignorant of the ground realities. Barring a couple of stretches of the national highway, the villages have witnessed a sea change in terms of development,” Nath claimed.

Reacting sharply to the minister's comments, Leader of Opposition Jitendra Chaudhury claimed that in his desperate move to criticise the Left Front, the minister had started to speak nonsense.

“We don’t need a certificate of patriotism from the BJP and its leaders. The Minister who has made the remarks is a senior politician of the state, and though he is right now in BJP, no wonder how long he would continue in the party, given the changing political situation of the whole country. The BJP has caught itself in tight spots all over the country,” said Chaudhury.

On the political strength of the party, he said, “The voting percentage no longer determines the public support and popularity of a political party as the elections are not conducted fairly. All previous elections had been turned into farcical exercises under the reign of BJP. The CPI(M) had also fought from the front whenever the democratic values of the country came under attack, and Tripura is no exception.”

Stating that the BJP, Tipra Motha and IPFT had once come together with a single-point agenda to prevent the Left, Chaudhury said, “The BJP and Tipra Motha are fighting each other in 80 per cent of the seats, which means the electoral understanding that was formalised at the top level was defied by the local-level leaders and party workers of their own parties. The leaders have realised that their days are numbered, and all accounts will be settled with compound interest in the days to come,” he added.