NEW DELHI: The Congress may be having a hard time in Tripura with senior leaders leaving the party to join the Trinamool Congress, but it has some “good news” from unexpected quarters.
The CPM has assured the party that the students of Tripura will continue to study the role of the Congress in India’s freedom struggle and about Mahatma Gandhi and the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The assurance that the Left-ruled state would not tamper with history was given by CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
Yechury has written to Congress Kerala president Ramesh Chennithala, who had raised that Gandhi and Nehru were very much part of the curriculum in Tripura, the only Left-ruled state other than Kerala. “Chennithala had raised the matter with me and I had asked the Tripura party and the government about the issue. I have responded to him,’’ Yechury told Express.
Yechury also attached the syllabus of Tripura schools for the Congress leader’s perusal.
“I have enquired from the CPM Tripura State Committee and asked for a response to these media reports and your letter. I had also enquired with the government of Tripura and discussed with the Minister of Education,’’ he has said.
There is an increasing closeness between the CPM and the Congress in Tripura on the lines of the election tie-up in Bengal. The TMC is steadily increasing its grip on the state.
“The growth of Trinamool will be at the CPM’s expense as happened in Bengal. So we will do anything to stop that,’’ a CPM central committee leader from Tripura said. When asked about the TMC threat, Yechury said, “We will not let a repetition of Bengal in Tripura.”