AGARTALA, May 6: The newly floated Indigenous People's Front of Tripura, a tribal party which was backed by the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura, (NLFT) has registered a resounding victory over the ruling Left Front in the just concluded Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections. Out of the 28 elected, the Independent candidates of IPFT has bagged 18 seats while the Left Front candidates have won 10. The Left Front partners CPI and Forward Bloc have shared one seat each. Most importantly, the TTAADC elections have evidently eroded the traditional vote bank of the Communists, who have ruled unchallenged for the last 50 years and brought a new force IPFT to sway the tribal electorate. The tribal electorate is decisive in at least 20 Assembly segments which determine the party to come to state power. It was a straight fight between the IPFT and ruling Left Front while all the 17 Congress candidates forfeited their security. Most important of the fallen Left Front heavyweights is the chief executive member of the outgoing ADC Ranjit Debbarma. He was defeated by IPFT candidate Binay Debbarma in Ramchandraghat constituency, the home place of former Chief Minister, Dasarath Deb, and so far considered to be a bastion of Communist movement since the early 1950s. The ruling Left Front, which has alleged largescale rigging and intimidation by the IPFT workers with the help of militants, said, the election results do not reflect the popular mandate. The Left Front alleged that the IPFT had unleashed a reign of terror with killings and kidnappings of party cadres and their close relatives before the elections. The Left Front also accused the TUJS, BJP, Trinamool Congress and Janata Dal (U) for not participating in the elections which helped the NLFT-backed IPFT to capture power. Pradesh Congress president Birajit Sinha said the ADC elections turned out to be a 'historic farce'. The TUJS, BJP and other parties also maintained that the ADC polls were not at all fair as the militants dictated terms and intimidated the voters. (Correspondent; The Assam Tribune; Guwahati; May 7, 2000)

AGARTALA, May 7: The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) elections, which made evident the erosion of Communists' unchallenged influence over Tripura tribals, is important for more than one reason. The first being that the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura militants have taken part in the 'democratic' process under the Indian Constitution, in an indirect way though. The militants, who were carrying out bloody offensives against the majority Bengali community with massacre, abductions, arsons and rapes, to drive them out of the ADC areas, certainly kept in mind an agenda before supporting the IPFT. If the NLFT tries to implement its agenda of Bengali cleaning in ADC areas with the help of council executives legally elected, then the state will witness an all-out civil war. "Reason is simple. The NLFT will never be able to drive out all the non-tribals from Tripura or for that matter from even the ADC areas,' says a political observer here. 'The demography cannot be reversed by bloodshed, not certainly by ethnic cleaning theory simply become no force of minority community can ever cleanse a majority community', he said. It goes without saying that as long as the militants are in jungles with AK-47s in hand, they will certainly keep on dictating terms to the elected executives of the ADC. In that case, hardcore IPFT politicians like Harinath Debbarma, Debabrata Koloi or Sridam Debbarma cannot sustain for long such pulls from behind and try their best to bring the militants to some sort of a settlement, feel some observers. If so, NLFT, which has already earned crores of rupees by abductions and other means, may now feel it wise to come overground through some kind of negotiations. Besides militant matters, the second most important points is that a new equation has emerged in the Tripura politics. Since the 1950s the Left Front had maintained its tribal support base intact and swayed the tribal electorate all the time. The TUJS might have appeared in ADC or some of Assembly seats when the Congress shone in Tripura with the sun burning bright in Delhi, it never posed any real threat to the Left Front's traditional tribal vote bank. However, considered to be comparatively liberal and rather 'Congressised,' TUJS had to bow out of the field in the face of militants' terror at the very outset leaving the IPFT to fight against the Left Front. The IPFT has definitely played the militant card well against the ruling party. (Manas Paul; The Assam Tribune; Guwahati; May 8, 2000)

AGARTALA, May 12: Tripura law secretary AB Paul on Friday administered the oath of office and secrecy to the newly-elected members of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) at a simple function held at the council headquarters at Khumulwng in West Tripura. state Tribal Welfare minister Aghore Debbarma and Chief Executive Officer of the TTAADC M Naga Raju were present at the function. The election for the 30-member TTAADC was held in two phases on April 30 and May 3. Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), a tribal-based party, voted out the ruling CPI(M)-led Left Front government winning 18 of the 28 elected seats. (UNI; The Assam Tribune; Guwahati; May 13, 2000)