Manas Bhunia to help TMC expand base in Tripura

Rebel Congress leader Manas Bhunia will help the Trinamool Congress, which he recently joined, expand its base in Tripura by winning over the Congress voters there.
Bhunia, along with senior TMC leader and MP Abhishek Banerjee, will soon pay a visit to Tripura.
A senior TMC leader said the main reason behind Bhunia leaving the Congress was his unhappiness over Congress' decision to tie up with the CPI(M) in Bengal.
"Just like him, many Congress leaders, workers and supporters of Tripura are unhappy with the Congress's decision to align with the CPI(M), which is their main opponent in the state," he said.

The TMC leader said that he would focus on the pitfalls of forging alliance with the CPI(M) and how the Congress lost credibility in the state.
Manas, however, did not like to dwell on his impending Tripura visit, but said, "I am ready for any assignment given by party chief Mamata Banerjee".

The Trinamool Congress has already carved a place for itself in the Marxist bastion emerging as the principal opposition party after six dissident Congress MLAs had joined it last June.
Sudip Ray Barman, who led the Congress dissidents in the sensitive Northeastern state said,"the people of Tripura had become fed up with the Left Front regime and disapproved of the tie-up between the Congress and the Left Front in West Bengal,".

After her landslide victory in West Bengal, Banerjee and her trusted lieutenant Mukul Roy have been working to expand her party's influence in the Northeast with Tripura being the prime target. The Bengali population there forms the largest ethno-linguistic group in the state with nearly about 70 per cent of the population.
According to TMC sources in Kolkata, Tripura and the Northeast hold a key to TMC's pan-India political ambition with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha poll where TMC wants to play a vital role.