Tripura poll takeaways: As new-found friends Left, Congress fail to impress, and a royal waits in wings, BJP is king

Here are the three key takeaways from the Tripura verdict:

1) The seat-sharing flop show: Till 2018, describing the relations between the Left Front and the Congress in Tripura as bitter would have been an understatement. The third-smallest in India in terms of geographical area, Tripura gained much infamy due to political violence, as workers and supporters of these parties often clashed, leading to murders and arson. Moreover, with the LF enjoying an uninterrupted run in power between 1993 and 2018, families supporting the Congress felt discriminated against on the questions of delivery of welfare schemes and garnering of government jobs. Against this backdrop, right from the beginning, there was a big question mark over the potential of any alliance between the two, with many arguing that transfer of votes between the two parties — an essential prerequisite for an alliance to work — may not happen. In the end, in a repeat of the 2016 Assembly polls in West Bengal when the Left and the Congress had fought jointly, the arrangement came a cropper. While the Congress, which was reduced to zero in 2018, managed to win three seats, taking up its vote share from 1.8 per cent to 8.6 per cent, the CPI(M) saw its tally fall from 16 to 11, and vote share from 42.2 per cent to 24.6 per cent — another clear indication that while the Congress gained from Left votes, the reverse did not happen.

2) The rise of the ‘king’: The Manikya dynasty ruled the kingdom of Tripura or Twipra from the late 13th-century till the signing of the Instrument of Accession with the Union of India on October 15, 1949. From a kingdom inhabited by many indigenous communities, Tripura saw a radical shift in its demography with the entry of displaced Bengalis fleeing religious persecution in East Pakistan. It sparked cultural anxieties and ethnic tensions, which turned into an armed conflict with the birth of several insurgent groups. As the insurgency ebbed, many political movements also rose from its ashes, leading to the birth of parties such as the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT) and the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT). The latest addition to that list — Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA Motha) — is by far the most successful such party in the state. With 13 seats, the party is set to emerge as the second largest in the state, ahead of the CPI(M), which had to settle for 11 seats. It also controls the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC). It remains to be seen if TIPRA Motha, led by Pradyot Debbarma, the charismatic son of the last king of Tripura Kirit Bikram Debbarma, joins the BJP-led government in the coming days.

3) The new hegemon: Once a non-entity in Tripura, the BJP has cemented its dominance with this result. While its vote share has dipped from 43.59 per cent in 2018 to 39 per cent, the party is poised to attain a simple majority with 32 seats in the 60-seat Assembly. Midway into its first term, the BJP was facing strong headwinds as its government under Biplab Deb turned unpopular, even as the party struggled to contain resentment within its own ranks. Over the last five years, as many as eight MLAs quit the ruling coalition, breathing life into the moribund state Congress, while also strengthening the grip of TIPRA Motha. The BJP tried to correct course by removing Deb from the post of chief minister, replacing him with mild-mannered maxillofacial surgeon Manik Saha, barely nine months ahead of the polls. The results show that the party’s gamble paid off, with non-tribals, predominantly made up of Bengalis, lending support to the ‘double engine’ formula. In the run-up to the polls, the BJP’s central leadership also managed to convince the electorate that the delivery of public services and welfare schemes, unlike the Left regime, was largely immune from political pulls and pressures, as the state saw a surge in the number of pucca houses with toilets and piped water, under various Union government schemes.