It is increasingly becoming clear that BJP is hoping for an Opposition-mukt Bharat. Karnataka is one step in that direction, but there are several others whom the BJP would like in their fold. This time home minister Amit Shah decided to convince the CPI(M) MP from Tripura to join their party, who rebuffed his attempts.

On July 16, Tripura’s lone Rajya Sabha MP Jharna Das Baidya had gone to meet Amit Shah in his office in Parliament to speak about the violence in the state in the run-up to Panchayat elections in her state. She had in fact gone to discuss the issue of a woman whose husband was killed because she had decided to contest the Panchayat elections.

Her appointment was fixed for 5 pm but it got delayed till 7 pm and she was waiting outside the chamber of the Home Minister. “I had gone to submit a memorandum on the violence in Tripura.”

When she had gone to speak to him, Shah allegedly stated that she should quit CPI(M) as the Left was finished in the country. He again repeated himself to a shocked Baidya. “Amit Shah said “When I submitted the memorandum, he said why are you in that party? You join us (BJP). I said I had come to meet the Home Minister of India and not the BJP president, but it didn’t seem to matter,” asserted Baidya.