Tags:
Journalism of Courage
As polling kicks off for the Tripura Assembly elections, the contest — between the ruling BJP-IPFT alliance and the opposition Left Front and Congress, who have entered into a “seat-sharing” alliance — looks poised for a tight finish.
The BJP, which fought in alliance with IPFT in 2018, is again contesting with its tribal ally, though the IPFT has been given only 5 seats this time, compared to 9 in the last elections. While the BJP is fighting to defend its fort in Tripura – a state it had won for the first time five years back — once rivals CPI(M) and Congress are fighting to recover lost turf.
In 2018, the BJP secured 43.59 per cent vote share and won 36 seats as opposed to CPI(M), which won only 16 seats but received 42.22 per cent votes. On average, Tripura has 40-45 thousand voters in each Assembly seat, and a narrow margin of 500-1,000 votes makes a lot of difference in most seats.
The Congress, which suffered a major defection — in which 6 MLAs left to join BJP just before the 2018 polls — managed to secure 1.86 per cent votes, a drastic fall from the 40-45 per cent votes it used to get even during the 25 consecutive years of Left rule prior to 2018.
BJP’s ally IPFT had got 7.38 per cent votes in 2018, but the tribal party didn’t fare well in subsequent elections, including the 2021 ADC polls, where it failed to open its account.
The narrow margin between the BJP and CPI(M) in 2018 is expected to determine the outcome this time, especially since the Congress and communist parties have come together and their collective vote bank might impact the poll results in favour of the opposition.
Meanwhile, with a history of poll violence segueing into fresh rounds of violence in the run up to the Assembly polls in Tripura, tight security is being deployed across the state, with 11,000 state police and Tripura State Rifles (TSR) jawans, in addition to 400 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) brought in for poll duty.
In an effort to ensure a violence-free election, the Election Commission earlier announced ‘Mission Zero Violence and 929’ – expressing its commitment to curb violence and malpractices and to boost polling in the 929 polling stations where turnout was low in the 2018 polls.
However, with two political activists, including one from the Left Front and the other from TIPRA Motha, killed weeks before the polls, and allegations of violence by the CPI(M) and the Congress, the EC is trying to leave no room for complacency.
A vulnerability survey has identified 1,128 polling stations as ‘sensitive’, including 1,100 ‘vulnerable’ and 28 ‘critical’ booths. The vulnerable areas are categorised based on previous history of violence, while the critical ones are categorised by record of over 70 per cent votes polled for a single candidate in any seat, indicating that the voting pattern was slanted towards a particular side.
