Mamata best suited to lead Oppn: Ripun Bora

New Delhi: "Instead of acting on the BJP, Congress has been bickering with the internal fights," ex-Congressman and the new Trinamool Congress member Ripun Bora sharply criticized the 'Grand Old' party on Tuesday. Bora resigned from Congress in the last week and joined TMC on April 17 in Kolkata, in the presence of the national president of the party Abhishek Banerjee.

According to Bora, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is best suited to lead the opposition front in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Political experts feel that in its bid to emerge as the primary opposition in the Northeast, Bora's association with Trinamool is significant.

Earlier, Sushmita Dev and Mukul Sangma also joined the party from Congress.

The former Assam cabinet minister also expressed his disappointment over the incumbent Congress leadership and told the media persons here while addressing a press conference that as being an old party he had confidence in Congress top brass to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is "destroying all the institutions of the country," however, the party's inner fight "allowed the BJP to have a free pass in Assam," he stated.

Bora, who took over as the chief of the Assam Congress in 2016, claimed that he was able to bring the party to a position where people expected it to form the government in the state in the 2021 assembly elections. However, "People lost faith in us" due to infighting, he said.

TMC Rajya Sabha member and another former Congress member Sushmita Dev also accompanied Bora, who asserted that "There is a significant populace in Assam, which opposes the BJP and Trinamool is trying to give voice to that section of people... We will be building an organisation in Assam." Dev, a prominent Bengali face from Assam's Barak Valley, is helping strengthen the TMC's grassroots in Tripura also.

While talking, she further gave the example of the BJP, which has managed to rise and rise despite its perception once as a party of "outsiders", in the region. She said that the BJP now holds sway among all the Hindu communities, across ethnicities. "So does this so-called divide between Assamese Hindus, tribals and Bengali Hindus matter electorally?" Dev asked. Making a scathing attack on Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for "mischievously distorting" her statement over CAA-NRC, she said, "He used my statement to create discord between Hindus and Muslims in Assam".

According to the leaders of the Northeast region, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's vision is to unite Upper Assam, Lower Assam and Barak Valley- the three regions of the state.

While Ripun Bora also claimed that he left Congress as he did not want to waste his energy in the party. "I no longer wanted to waste my energy in Congress which in Assam is least interested in fighting the BJP. I have joined the TMC to build a strong opposition against the BJP in Assam," he said, adding that he did not switch camps to get a Rajya Sabha berth.

Adding further, Bora confirmed that political strategist Prashant Kishore, who is countering the Congress, had called him to congratulate him on his move.