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Journalism of Courage
IN A BIG boost for the ruling BJP in Tripura, the party won bypolls to both the Assembly seats for which results were declared Friday. One of the constituencies was a sitting seat of the CPI(M), which was backed by ally Congress in the bypoll.
The victories come six months after the BJP returned to power for the second time in the state, but with a wafer-thin majority. With the two wins, the BJP’s tally goes up to 33 seats in the 60-member Assembly.
The Dhanpur bypoll had been necessitated due to the resignation of the BJP’s Pratima Bhoumik from the seat, after she chose to continue as an MP and Union Minister of State. The Boxanagar bypoll had to be held due to the death of its sitting MLA, the CPI(M)’s Samsul Haque.
The CPI(M) had fielded Haque’s son Mohd Mijan Hossain, but he could not win his father’s seat, losing to the BJP’s Tafajjal Hossain. In Assembly elections earlier this year, Tafajjal Hossain had been the runner-up.
In Dhanpur, the CPI(M) had fielded Kaushik Chandra, who had lost to Bhoumik in the February Assembly elections. Chandra lost to the BJP’s Bindu Debnath in the bypoll.
While the victory margin of the BJP in Dhanpur had been 3,500 in the February Assembly polls, the CPI(M) had won Boxanagar by 4,849 votes. In the bypoll, the BJP swung Boxanagar by a massive margin of 30,237 votes. The CPI(M) candidate got only 3,909 votes. In Dhanpur, which once was the home turf of former Chief Minister and CPI(M) stalwart Manik Sarkar, the BJP won by an impressive 18,871 votes.
In the Assembly elections, the presence of the TIPRA Motha in the contest had hurt the CPI(M) in Dhanpur, with the tribal outfit getting 8,671 votes. This was double the victory margin of the BJP in the Assembly elections.
In the bypolls, the TIPRA chose to remain equidistant. This had given Chandra some hope as the fear was that the tribal outfit might lend support to the BJP, since it was seen as increasingly leaning towards the ruling party to secure some concessions for its tribal demands.
The BJP candidate who won from Dhanpur, Bindu Debnath, is an ex-Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) leader who started his BJP journey with the Yuva Morcha. Currently chairman of the Education Standing Committee of the state government, this was his first Assembly contest.
At Boxanagar, where there are more minority and tribal voters compared to Dhanpur, the CPI(M)’s Mizan could not cash in on his late father’s influence, and was seen as an absentee candidate who appeared only on voting day. The CPI(M) had defended him saying they had told Mizan not to go to the Boxanagar area as there was a threat to his life, with the police declining to provide him escort.
Soon after polling had ended on September 5, with above 80% of the voters casting their ballot, the CPI(M) had claimed that the process was rigged and said it would boycott the counting.
While bypolls are usually won by the ruling party, the victory will add fillip to the BJP’s claim regarding the Left’s “declining” support base in the state, saying the voters preferred “development politics” instead of “politics of violence”.
