Of 13 seats in Cong’s Tripura share, 12 were won by BJP last time, but with narrow margins

The Congress had failed to open its account in the 2018 elections, with its only existing MLA, Sudip Roy Barman, having won a bypoll last year after returning to the party from the BJP. His seat, Agartala, is among the 13 in Congress kitty.

Of these 13, the BJP won all last time barring Kailashahar, with the winning MLAs going on to hold important posts in the government. However, the margins in most of these seats were low.

Sources said senior Congress leaders who held the seat talks with the Left had requested the latter to delay announcement of their candidates till they received a go-ahead from the Delhi high command. However, the Left Front went ahead and announced 47 names.

Tripura state Congress president Birajit Sinha had earlier promised a candidate list by January 25, but now no one is willing to say when that might happen.

The 13 seats given to the Congress are Mohanpur (victory margin 5,176 votes in 2018); Agartala (7,382 votes); Town Bardowali (11,178); Banamalipur (9,549); Suryamaninagar (4,567); Charilam (25,550); Teliamura (7,179); Matabari (1,569); Kamalpur (2,959); Karamcherra (7,336); Kailashahar (4,834); Dharmanagar (7,287); and Pecharthal (1,373).

Among these 12, Mohanpur is the home turf of Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ratan Lal Nath, while Chief Minister Manik Saha won his first-ever Assembly election in a bypoll from Town Bardowali seat last year. Ex-CM Biplab Kumar Deb had won from Banamalipur last time, while Charilam is considered the fiefdom of Deputy CM Jishnu Devvarma.

Besides, Kamalpur elected Food and Civil Supplies Minister Manoj Kanti Deb in 2018, while Agartala had been retained by Roy Barman, then in the BJP.

Some of these seats are vacant now, including Banamalipur. Biplab Deb relinquished it after he stepped down as CM and moved on to become a Rajya Sabha MP last year.

Of the state’s eight districts, the Congress will be contesting in all barring South Tripura, which the Left claims as its stronghold. CPI(M) state secretary Jitendra Chaudhury is contesting from Sabroom constituency in this district.

Senior CPI(M) leader and former deputy Speaker Pabitra Kar said the alliance seat-sharing was based on an assessment of the list of seats put forth by the Congress itself.

“They gave us a list. We took the stand that we will not part with any seats where we have sitting MLAs, since normally any party holds on to its sitting seat. But they requested for a sitting seat for their party’s state president. So, we asked our MLA there to step back and made the Kailashahar seat available for Birajit Sinha,” Kar said.

CPI(M) leader Chaudhury had earlier said that the seat-sharing was decided based on where they had the maximum chance of winning, since defeating the BJP was the main agenda of the alliance, and that the Congress was on board with this.

The Left Front has already started its campaign preparations based on the seat-sharing formula.

While the Congress held on to around 40% of the vote share in the state for a long time, even during the 25 years it was out of power as the Left ruled, it was decimated last time, reduced to less than 3% of the votes.