Agartala: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is facing a difficult political balancing act in Tripura, trying to hold together allies that have repeatedly clashed on the ground while also containing factional disputes within its own organisation, with the 2028 Assembly election looming as the larger test of whether the arrangement can hold.IPFT general secretary Swapan Debbarma is one of the latest victims of political violence in Tripura. Photo: Special arrangement.The latest flashpoint came on September 8, when Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) general secretary Swapan Debbarma filed a complaint alleging he and his driver were brutally attacked in Hezamara by supporters of TIPRA Motha. The incident took place just days after the BJP, TIPRA Motha and IPFT agreed to contest the upcoming Village Committee elections together.IPFT minister Sukla Charan Noatia condemned the attack. Two days later, Noatia posted photos on social media where he was seen sitting with TIPRA Motha leaders in Shantirbazar in South Tripura to coordinate booth-level strategy for the very same polls.A conflicted allianceTIPRA Motha MLA Ranjit Debbarma rejected allegations that his party leadership orchestrated the Hezamara attack. On September 9, Ranjit questioned why the five police personnel accompanying Swapan did not intervene.“The attackers will be identified by the police and they will get justice. But after the attack, why is there so much anger against Maharaj [Pradyot]? Maharaj did not order the attack,” Ranjit added.IPFT Minister with TIPRA Motha leaders after the attack on Swapan Debbarma. Photo: Special arrangement.The Hezamara confrontation fits a longer pattern of disputes between the ruling partners. Since the 2023 Assembly elections, a sort of political leadership is projected at the leadership level, however, at the ground level there has often been tension between party workers.On August 22, just weeks before the attack, violence flared in Khumulwng where a local BJP office was attacked and vehicles were damaged, with BJP leaders alleging the involvement of TIPRA Motha members.Similar clashes broke out during the April 2026 Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) elections, which the parties contested separately. At Takarjala on April 10, Sepahijala District Superintendent of Police Bijoy Debbarma was injured while intervening in a confrontation at the residence of BJP candidate Nirmal Debbarma.These confrontations have persisted even outside election cycles. In July 2025, nine BJP functionaries were injured in Asharambari during a clash while attending a public screening of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Mann ki Baat” programme. A subsequent clash in Hezamara left four people injured, including a journalist and BJP Janajati Morcha vice-president Mangal Debbarma.IPFT sidelined in seat talksThe new electoral arrangement has largely bypassed IPFT, BJP’s oldest regional ally.Following the meeting on September 4 in New Delhi between Union home minister Amit Shah, chief minister Manik Saha, TIPRA Motha founder Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma and BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra, seat-sharing discussions moved to Agartala.The BJP and TIPRA Motha held two rounds of bilateral talks, first at a private hotel on September 6 and then at the State Guest House on September 10. IPFT representatives were absent from both.Speaking to The Wire on September 10, Minister of State and TIPRA Motha MLA Brishaketu Debbarma confirmed that the national leadership left the seat distribution matter to the local leaders.“In Delhi, there was no discussion about seat sharing at all,” Brishaketu said. “Only that an alliance should be formed, that’s it.” He added that subsequent local meetings were held to sort out problems.The party has publicly questioned its exclusion. On September 12, IPFT general secretary and minister Sukla Charan Noatia confirmed the party had received no official word on seat distribution.“We are in the NDA [National Democratic Alliance] today. But officially, no communication has yet come to us on how many candidates will be given by the NDA, or how many seats will be shared or allotted to our party,” Noatia said.The marginalisation sparked sharper allegations at the IPFT’s central executive committee meeting in Agartala on September 12. Party president Prem Kumar Reang alleged that their candidates were physically blocked from entering several block development offices to submit nomination papers.“Using intimidation, violence and terror to bar candidates from entering blocks is an attempt to strangle democracy,” Reang said, adding that 90% of the party’s candidate withdrawals were forced through coercion and threats.“Wherever it was possible for us to stand and contest the election, we did not withdraw and in places where we were attacked and chased out, we were forced to withdraw yesterday,” he added.The pressure has triggered open revolt from within. On September 10, IPFT Mandwi divisional president Rajkumar Debbarma publicly demanded that the party snap all ties with the ruling coalition.“We no longer want to stay with BJP, nor NDA, nor NEDA. Because we have seen enough. No more,” Rajkumar said.While Reang stated that a formal decision on staying with the NDA would be taken around October or November before Christmas, the party’s bargaining power has sharply declined. Once the dominant tribal force alongside the BJP, IPFT was reduced to a single MLA in the 2023 Assembly elections and failed to win a single seat in the April 2026 TTAADC polls.Pradyot defends the alliance, points to accordFor TIPRA Motha founder Pradyot, the electoral alliance with the BJP is transactional, tied directly to the implementation of the Tiprasa Accord signed on March 2, 2024.Addressing questions during a Facebook Live on September 5, a day after his New Delhi meeting with Amit Shah, Pradyot claimed the chief minister had publicly committed to a strict timeline.“This time the chief minister has said it himself, for the first time, in front of the media, that the Tiprasa accord will be implemented within one month. I am not the one saying it, the chief minister has said it,” Pradyot said.Responding to critics, he added, “If you have waited 70 years, why should we not wait one month?”According to Pradyot, the understanding includes routing central funds for Village Committees directly through the TTAADC rather than state departments. He also claimed a separate Rs 250 crore financial package linked to the surrender accords with the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) would be disbursed under the accord.Pradyot has insisted that land rights protections under the accord must extend to indigenous voters across party lines. In an earlier social media broadcast on September 2, he credited his own legal battle before the Tripura High Court and the Supreme Court with forcing the government to conduct the Village Committee polls after a decade-long gap.“This is not happening because anyone wanted it to. We forced this, going to the Supreme Court, spending money,” he said.Opposition says rivalry is stagedOpposition parties argue that the repeated friction between the BJP and TIPRA Motha is deliberate political theatre designed to mask a deeper tactical understanding at the top.Speaking to The Wire, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) state secretary and Leader of the Opposition in Tripura Assembly Jitendra Chaudhury described the public hostility as a calculated diversion.“This is the game of a skilled magician. The top leadership wines and dines together in five-star hotels, while on the ground, ordinary workers are pitted against one another, made to shed blood and destroy property,” Jitendra said.Jitendra pointed to the shifting electoral alignments over the last three years. The BJP and TIPRA Motha contested separately in the 2023 Assembly election and the April 2026 TTAADC polls, partnered in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, and have now allied again for the Village Committee contest.He also questioned the timing of a 72-hour rail and road blockade launched on September 4 by organisations representing surrendered cadres of the NLFT and ATTF. Jitendra alleged the demonstrators had links to the BJP, noting that the agitation was called off on September 5 following administrative talks, immediately after the BJP and TIPRA Motha concluded high-level discussions in New Delhi.“These are all dramas,” Jitendra said, referring to the blockade. He alleged that people associated with the BJP were involved in the protest and said the government had allowed the agitation to continue while the chief minister was in Delhi.Jitendra placed TIPRA Motha and the IPFT in the same political lineage, arguing that regional tribal outfits have historically been assembled to keep the Left out of power. Regardless of their shifting alliances, he said, the CPI(M) would contest against both ruling parties across the state.Asked why TIPRA Motha fielded significantly more candidates than the BJP despite their seat-sharing pact, Jitendra said the decision was intentional.“The ordinary BJP worker does not understand this, but the state’s top leadership knowingly drank this poison,” he said, arguing that the BJP deliberately surrendered space to TIPRA Motha in the tribal areas.Congress calls alliance a fraudThe Tripura Pradesh Congress has attacked the pact (Tiprasa Accord) as an unprincipled arrangement aimed at deceiving indigenous voters while sidelining core promises.On September 13, Congress MLA Sudip Roy Barman termed the partnership an “opportunistic alliance” and questioned why the Tiprasa Accord was being revived only when elections approached.“Outcome? Zero,” Barman said, arguing that there has been no tangible progress on the ground more than two years after the agreement was signed.He pointed to the September 4 meeting in New Delhi, questioning why A.K. Mishra, the Ministry of Home Affairs adviser heading the Joint Working Group on the accord’s implementation, was absent from the discussions.While describing the tripartite agreement, Barman said, “Thug (fraud) plus thug plus thug equals maha-thug (major fraud), which means three parties, the BJP, TIPRA Motha and IPFT, all three add up to one giant fraud.”Congress state president Asish Kumar Saha raised similar questions on September 7, following Pradyot’s social media address. Asish Kumar accused the royal scion of capitulating to the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leadership, calling the renewed promises “old wine in a new bottle.”Asish Kumar noted that Pradyot had provided no clarity on when the supposed one-month implementation timeline actually begins, how an accord could be formally executed after the model code of conduct comes into force, or what specific terms had been agreed upon.The primary objective of the alliance, Asish Kumar alleged, was not the local council polls, but the 2028 Assembly elections, where he claimed the ruling coalition plans to deploy administrative leverage to split the anti-BJP vote.BJP faces dissent within its own ranksThe friction is not confined to the BJP’s relationship with its allies. Seat-sharing concessions have also provoked open rebellion among the party’s own grassroots workers.BJP workers in the Ludhua area of Sabroom in South Tripura gutted their own party office on September 8 after learning that seats they expected to contest had been allotted to TIPRA Motha. Photo: Special arrangement.On September 8, BJP workers in the Ludhua area of Sabroom gutted their own party office after learning that seats they expected to contest had been conceded to TIPRA Motha. The protesting cadres subsequently resolved to field independent candidates across the contested seats.Less than two weeks earlier, on August 29, local rivalries in Kamalpur boiled over into police cases. A dispute over social media videos at the residence of MLA Manoj Kanti Deb resulted in cross-FIRs between the legislator’s family and local mandal leaders.Speaking on August 3, senior BJP leader and former Union minister Pratima Bhoumik offered a blunt assessment of this growing indiscipline. “Those who were in the BJP before 2018, or before 2020, are no longer in the same BJP. You don’t see them,” Pratima said. She described newer entrants as “beneficiaries” and warned that cadres had deviated from party ideology.BJP state president Abhishek Debroy had acknowledged similar friction in July, admitting that rivalries between sitting mandal presidents and their predecessors remained a challenge. “Problems exist everywhere, but we have to minimise them,” he said.That same month, the party suspended former member of District Council Padma Lochan Tripura over anti-party social media activity and expelled a booth-level functionary in Bordowali. These actions followed a string of expulsions in the spring and early summer.In May, former panchayat pradhan Biswajit Debnath was removed in Sonaimuri after leading a no-confidence motion against sitting panchayat heads. A month prior, in April, South Tripura district vice-president Rati Mohan Tripura was expelled after defecting to TIPRA Motha.Physical violence over government contracts and local influence also plagued the party earlier in the year. In February, former Charilam mandal president Rajkumar Debnath sought police protection after being assaulted by party members during a clash over rural development work orders.In January, a fight over a municipal tender in Kailashahar left mandal president Pritam Ghosh injured. The violence forced police to fire blank rounds to disperse the crowd after an undeclared BJP office was set ablaze and a Yuva Morcha leader’s residence was attacked.The internal discord has even reached the legislative wing. In November 2025, BJP MLA Tafajjal Hossain received a show-cause notice for gross indiscipline after publicly criticising Pratima, former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb, and minority front president Billal Miah.An alliance, by the numbersThe final nomination figures reveal that the September 28 Village Committee elections will not be a unified tripartite contest. Despite their formal pact, candidates from the BJP, TIPRA Motha and IPFT will face off directly against one another across several constituencies.State Election Commission secretary Anurag Sen confirmed on September 12 that 2,954 of the 4,597 seats will see active voting. Another 1,640 seats were won uncontested, and three seats received no nominations.TIPRA Motha completely dominated the uncontested victories, securing 1,557 of those 1,640 seats. The BJP secured 81, while the CPI(M) and an independent candidate won one seat each.The imbalance remains stark among the 9,820 candidates left in the active race following scrutiny and withdrawals. The three ruling partners have collectively fielded 6,488 candidates for the 4,597 available seats.TIPRA Motha fielded the largest contingent at 4,279 candidates. The BJP retained 1,853 candidates, and the IPFT managed just 356. On the opposition side, the CPI(M) fielded 2,151 candidates, while the Congress kept 425 in the fray.BJP state president Abhishek acknowledged the overlap. “In some places, nominations were not withdrawn either, there will be a friendly fight,” Abhishek said. “In some places campaigning will be done together, wherever the alliance is in place.”Chief minister Dr. Manik Saha defended the imbalance as a tactical necessity. “There is nothing surprising in this, because the main thing is that our NDA has to win,” he said.“NDA as a whole, and wherever anyone has more strength, that is where we want to secure victory,” he added.However, TIPRA Motha leadership was openly confident about this imbalance during the negotiation phase. Speaking to The Wire, MLA Brishaketu estimated his party would secure at least 75 percent of the total seats in the arrangement.CPI(M) leader Jitendra offered a sharply different interpretation. He alleged that the BJP intentionally surrendered vast swathes of the tribal council areas to TIPRA Motha.“The BJP did this deliberately, the state’s top BJP leadership knowingly drank this poison and not subconsciously, but with complete awareness,” Jitendra said.The road to 2028The September 28 Village Committee polls serve as an early proving ground for the 2028 Assembly elections. The BJP retained power in 2023 with 32 seats, while TIPRA Motha secured 13 to emerge as the principal opposition.The relationship between the two parties has constantly shifted since that contest. They aligned for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, separated for the April 2026 TTAADC elections, and have now forged another pact for the village-level contest.This new arrangement forces grassroots workers to campaign together just months after fighting each other in the district council elections. The upcoming vote will test if this coalition can actually function at the booth level. It will also measure the political fallout of the IPFT’s ongoing marginalisation and the public impatience surrounding the Tiprasa Accord.