Agartala: The BJP has forged an alliance with the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) for the Assembly polls on February 18, BJP state in-charge Sunil Deodhar said on Monday.
The IPFT has been in talks with the BJP for seat-sharing on the Assembly's Scheduled Tribe (ST) reserved seats for the past four days. Earlier, it had held two rounds of discussions in Guwahati and Delhi.
Tripura's 60-member Assembly has 20 ST seats while 10 are reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates.
Asked about seat sharing, Deodhar told reporters that the details would be available within two days. He said BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav has taken the BJP's proposed list of candidates for Tripura to the central leadership. The party's parliamentary board will discuss it and announce the final list on Wednesday.
He said there were reports of party workers speculating and getting perturbed over prospective candidates. He asked party supporters to "focus on duties and responsibilities" and not "panic" as "nothing is finalised".
None of the allies divulged details of the alliance.
A joint document on the common minimum programme (CMP) between the BJP and the IPFT, based on the agenda of socio-economic and political development of Tripura's indigenous communities, will also be announced on Wednesday.
Asked about the IPFT's demand for Twipraland, Deodhar declined to comment, only saying that the alliance would be based on the CMP.
Asked why talks on the alliance with the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT) had failed, he said the talks were "not yet over".
INPT supremo Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawl, however, said the talks were closed. "I am surprised they said so. We closed the scope of dialogue with mutual understanding yesterday (Sunday)". He said the BJP had offered his party two seats while the Congress was making a "respectable" offer.
The Congress is currently in talks with the INPT, the National Conference of Tripura (NCT), the IPFT Tipraha, a breakaway faction of IPFT, and the Trinamul Congress to form a third front for the Tripura polls. The dialogue is "positive" and the details are expected to be out in two days, INPT leaders said.
