role of the GMP. Some considered that the GMP, whose membership was overwhelmingly agrarian, should be integrated into the peasant mass organization of the party, AIKS, and that Tiprasas and Bengali peasants should fight together since their class interests were the same. Other, such as Deb, considered that the tribals were not merely peasants but also constituted a separate sub-national entity and that the GMP should be a Tiprasa organization articulating the sub-nationalist consciousness of the tribal community. In the beginning of the 1960s CPI suffered a severe internal division. The party was split into two camps on issues such as the relationship to the Congress party and the Sino-Soviet polemic. In 1964 the split was a fact, as two separate party congresses were held, one by CPI and the other by Communist Party of India (Marxist). The split also came to divide the Tripura unit of the CPI, with the CPI(M) soon having outmanovered the CPI in Tripura. Initially both factions agreed that the GMP ought to stay intact and that it would be spared from the split for the sake of unity of the mass organization movement, but soon competition over control over the organization started. At the GMP conference of 1967 the split had also reached the GMP, and CPI(M) formed Tripura Rajaer Upajati Ganamukti Parishad and its leader within the GMP, Deb, who were able to gather the support of the broad majority of the organization. At the same conference the GMP was re-christened as the Upajati (i.e., Tribal) Ganamukti Parishad. Subsequently, non-tribals were no longer able to obtain GMP membership. Thus Deb's thesis that Tiprasa constituted as separate subnationalist entity and needed a mass organization of their own had been implemented in the organizational practice. Following the 1967 conference CPI formed Tripura Rajya Ganamukti Parishad, led by Aghore Debbarma. ATPLO merger In 1983 the All Tripura Peoples Liberation Organization of Binanda Jamatya gave up their arms and were integrated into the Ganamukti Parishad. ATPLO had surged as a splinter group of the Tripura National Volunteers, and a turf war between the TNV soon turned into a bloody fight. In the end, ATPLO found no other viable solution than to align with their former enemies and thus merge into GMP. The organisation today Today the Tripura Rajaer Upajati Ganamukti Parishad is affiliated with the All India Kisan Sabha, the peasant mass-organization of the Communist Party of