Tripura Election Results 2023: Decline in support but Narendra Modi card rescues BJP

Tripura CM Manik Saha (extreme right) flashes the victory sign after winning in the Tripura Assembly elections from the Town Bardowali constituency, in West Tripura district, on March 2, 2023. (PTI Photo)

The results of the northeastern state of Tripura have brought cheers to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is going to form the government on its own. Till the time of writing this piece, the saffron party has bagged 30 seats and is leading on 2 taking the number to 32.

Its ally the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura has been able to win a single seat – Jolaibari (ST) of South Tripura, which was won by CPI(M) last time. The Left party won 11 seats while Congress won 3.

BJP Withstands Motha Wave, CPM-INC Alliance

The BJP has been able to snatch some crucial seats from CPM. These include Rajnagar (SC), Bagbassa, Chandipur, Kamalasagar and Manu (ST). In the Dhanpur seat, which has been a Left bastion, BJP’s candidate union minister Pratima Bhoumik defeated CPM’s Kaushik Chanda. Present Left stalwart and former chief minister Manik Sarkar has been representing this seat since 1998.

The BJP has been able to resist the threat of royal scion Pradyot Debbarma’s TIPRA Motha in a few tribal seats. One of the party’s prominent tribal faces Rampada Jamatia, who is also the current tribal affairs minister of the state, emerged victorious from the Bagma (ST) seat but with a reduced vote share of 38.74 percent – a reduction of 12.64 percentage points from 2018. In Chawmanu (ST) seat, BJP’s Sambhulal Chakma is ahead of Motha’s Hangsa Kumar Tripura, who was in BJP and was the leader of Opposition in Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) before joining Motha last year.

Decline In NDA Support

In the last assembly elections, the BJP bagged 35 seats with a vote share of 43 percent while its ally IPFT bagged 8 seats with 7.38 percent.  Later with the thumping win in Charilam (ST) seat, where there was actually no contest, BJP’s tally increased to 36 and vote share to 43.59 percent. So, the total vote share of NDA was 50.97 percent.

However, this time NDA’s vote share has reduced to 40.23 percent – a downfall of 10.74 percentage points. Individually, the BJP contesting 55 seats – 4 seats more than last time – got a vote share of 38.97 percent while its ally IPFT got only 1.26 percent votes.

Obviously, IPFT, which was the dominant party in the tribal belt in the last elections, lost much of its base to the TIPRA Motha, which is contesting for the first time and has won 13 seats. Pradyot’s party has got more than 20 percent votes – an impressive performance by this new party. IPFT’s working president Prem Kumar Reang, who is also a cabinet member of the present BJP government, lost badly from his Kanchanpur (ST) seat of North Tripura to Motha’s Philip Kumar Reang.

It is true that because of IPFT’s heavy losses, NDA saw a huge decline in votes. But the saffron party too has seen a reduction in its vote share. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP contesting alone had got 49 percent but this time it has gone below 40. In some non-ST seats too, BJP lost a few that it had won last time. State party president Rajib Bhattacharjee lost from the Banamalipur seat to Gopal Chandra Roy of Congress. This seat was won by former chief minister Biplab Deb last time with a big margin.

BJP’s sitting MLA Rebati Mohan Das, who was the speaker of the state assembly from 2018 to 2021, lost to Ramu Das of CPM in the Pratapgarh seat. In Bamutia, the party’s MLA Krishnadhan Das lost to CPM’s Nayan Sarkar and in Barjala (SC) seat, its sitting MLA Dilip Das lost to CPM’s Sudip Sarkar. These seats – Banamalipur, Pratapgarh, Bamutia and Barjala – all fall in the West Tripura district, which was completely swept by the BJP-IPFT alliance last time.

Split In Opposition And The Modi Factor

Tipra Motha seems to have benefitted the BJP in the non-ST constituencies by splitting the votes of the Opposition Left-Congress. In seats like Rajnagar, Pabiacharra, Teliamura, Surma, Panisagar, Chandipur, Bagbassa, Amarpur, Bishalgarh and Dhanpur the votes of Motha’s candidates are more than the winning margins of BJP candidates and thus leading to the defeat of the Left-Congress.

Last but not the least, the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again helped the BJP-led NDA to secure a simple majority, although last time NDA got two-third majority. The welfare schemes and the developmental projects of the Modi government have been very popular and today’s verdict confirms that the voters of the state are pleased with Modi.

That’s the reason despite having anger against the state leadership, the voters chose to vote for the saffron party again. 

Sagarneel Sinha is a political commentator. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.