Trinamul Congress allIndia general secretary Abhishek Banerjee is heading to Tripura tomorrow where he will hold organisational meetings and a media conference. Party sources said due to Covid restrictions, there will be no mass gathering where Abhishek could address people.

“So he will concentrate on small indoor meetings and later hold a press conference,” said Ashishlal Singh, Tripura TMC state president. He said Abhishek will start his campaign in Tripura for the 2023 Tripura Assembly polls by offering puja at the Tripureshwari temple.

Earlier, Trinamul Congress all-India president of women’s wing, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, had visited Tripura and also offered puja at the temple, located about 55 km from capital Agartala.

“Eyeing the 2023 Assembly polls, Abhishek is trying to reconstruct the party organisation and it is likely that some important leaders from the Congress and the BJP will join the TMC in the presence of its national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in Agartala,” TMC state president Ashishlal Singh said.

Singh added so far 700 workers have joined the party from the BJP in different parts of Tripura, including in North Tripura. Two West Bengal ministers ~ state education minister Bratya Basu and PWD minister Moloy Ghatak ~ along with INTTUC state president Ritabrata Banerjee went to Tripura on Wednesday for two days after members of poll strategist Prashant Kishor I-PAC were kept under house arrest in a hotel.

The ministers reportedly covered several areas of the state meeting various people and Basu said 70 per cent of the people are in favour of Trinamul Congress for the 2023 polls. Singh said like TMC in West Bengal, the party’s Tripura unit will also observe August 16 as “Khela Hobe Divas”. Trinamul Rajya Sabha MP and the party’s national spokesperson Derek O’Brien had also recently gone to Tripura and stated that Mamata Banerjee will take the BJP head-on be it in Agartala, Amritsar, Lucknow or Varanasi.

Later, Mamata Banerjee herself said that she will go to Uttar Pradesh for poll campaign. Meanwhile, Abhishek’s three lieutenants ~ Trinamul Youth Congress general secretary Debangshu Bhattacharya, Trinamul IT Cell head Sudip Raha and former Trinamul Chhatra Parishad president Jaya Dutta reached Agartala yesterday.

Debangshu said,”Like Bengal there will be Khela Hobe in Tripura in 2023. In 2018, people of Tripura wanted a change after long Left rule and voted for the BJP. They have realised their mistake and now want Trinamul Congress to come to Tripura because they have witnessed how people of West Bengal voted for Mamata Banerjee’s development agenda.”