BJP says it will rename roads in Tripura. Prime on the party’s list is Marx-Engels Sarani, a lane leading to the official residences of the Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues.

There is a lot in a name, especially if it is of roads in the capital city of Tripura, which is in the middle of a power shift.

Barely hours after defeating the Left Front comprehensively on Saturday, the Bharatiya Janata Party has said it will be the “end of the road” for Communist figures such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin in Agartala and elsewhere in the State.

This is in reference to roads and establishments that the CPI(M)-led government led by Manik Sarkar had renamed after those icons in the past 20 years.

Marx-Engels Sarani

Prime on the BJP’s list is Marx-Engels Sarani, a lane leading to the official residences of the Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues.

This lane is opposite Umakanta Academy, a landmark school that former Tripura king Radha Kishore Manikya had named after the kingdom’s Prime Minister Umakanta Das in 1904.

“The Leftists have never found local leaders to immortalise by naming public places after them. They did not even think of some of their own, such as Nripen Chakraborty [Chief Minister from 1978-1988] who died a lonely man at 99 years,” Sunil Deodhar, the brain behind the BJP’s meteoric rise in Tripura, told The Hindu.

National, local icons

He said the BJP would choose from national and local icons to rename Marx-Engels Sarani, named after Marx and Friedrich Engels. Another lane likely to be renamed is Lenin Sarani, a stretch from the busy Orient Choumuhuni to the Agartala Press Club.

The State capital also has landmarks named after Communist leaders such as Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese revolutionary, which the BJP is not comfortable with.

The BJP and its ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura, ended 25 years of Communist rule in Tripura by winning 43 of the 59 seats. The CPI(M) won 16. The election for the Charilam seat, deferred after the death of the CPI(M) candidate there, is scheduled for March 12.