Opinion Assembly polls in Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland could influence national politics

Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland, scheduled to vote on February 16 and 27 respectively, have a small presence in Parliament — five Lok Sabha seats — but the March 2 results are likely to have a bearing on national politics. The two main national parties, BJP and Congress, are in the fray in all three states; wins and losses are bound to influence perceptions as the battle shifts to bigger states. Six more assembly polls are due this year.

In Tripura, the BJP is likely to face a grand alliance of CPM, Congress and Tipra Motha, an outfit that claims to represent the state’s indigenous people. The BJP, which ended the nearly three decade-rule of the CPM in Tripura in 2018, needs to retain office to impress that its rise in the state was no fluke. A win in Tripura will be a first step for the CPM to regain its national footprint — in the first decade of this century, the party had governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, but today it is restricted to Kerala. However, the game-changer could be Tipra Motha, which has gained remarkable influence among the state’s indigenous communities who are influential in about two dozen assembly seats in a short span of time. The party was founded by Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma, the scion of the Tripura royal family and a former state Congress chief, after the 2019 general election as a platform to assert the rights of indigenous people, including demanding a separate state for them. The CPM and the Congress are set for a pre-poll coalition while the Tipra Motha has proposed support for its Tipraland statehood demand as a precondition to ally. The Tipra Motha virtually swept the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections last year.

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Meghalaya and Nagaland are headed by regional outfits — Conrad Sangma’s National People’s Party is technically a national party with a presence in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh — that have been with the NDA. However, local issues determine the logic of assembly polls more than any national alliance. The peace accord is likely to figure prominently in Nagaland. The encounter deaths in Oting in 2021 remain an emotive issue, whereas the BJP is likely to highlight the withdrawal of the AFSPA from many districts. In Meghalaya, Sangma’s NPP faces a challenge from the Trinamool Congress, which displaced the Congress as the main Opposition when 12 of the latter’s 17 MLAs crossed over. History shows that government-making in these states tends to be heavily influenced by the party in office at the Centre — earlier the Congress and now the BJP. It is likely to remain so, especially if the polls turn out to be close contests.