New Delhi: In the 2019 general elections, the BJP was able to open its account in Tripura. Its candidates – Rebati Tripura from East Tripura and Pratima Bhowmik from West Tripura – won by a massive margin of votes. But what is also worth taking note is the Congress’s resurgence in the northeastern state after it was thrashed in last year’s assembly polls.In the 2018 assembly elections, the BJP witnessed a dramatic rise and managed to unseat the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist). From a dismal 1.54% vote share in 2013 splayed through 50 of the 60 assembly seats it contested, the saffron party grabbed a huge chunk of the Congress’s vote share, surging to 43%.The grand old party had 36.53% of the vote share in 2013, which helped it win ten of the 48 seats it contested. In 2018, its tally was down to zilch, while the vote share tumbled to a gloomy 1.8%. Many pronounced the party dead in the state.Watch: Northeast Diary: BJP’s Victory in Arunachal Elections and Chamling’s Ouster From SikkimOn May 23, though the Congress failed to win either of Tripura’s Lok Sabha seats, a peek at the vote shares of all the players shows that the Congress – in a short span of time – managed to snatch back the share it lost.Data released by the Election Commission of India (ECI) shows that in the general elections, the Congress’s vote share in East Tripura Lok Sabha constituency was 26.58%. In the West Tripura constituency, it bagged 24.18% of the votes, thus emerging as the BJP’s main challenger.The CPI(M), which ruled the state for two decades and pocketed both the Lok Sabha seats since 1996, was third in the constituencies, with 19.22% (East Tripura) and 15.51% (West Tripura) vote shares.A study of these vote shares adds weight to the argument that in these elections, like in West Bengal, the BJP’s gained at the expense of the Left. While in the East Tripura constituency, the BJP received 46.12% of the vote, it took home 51.77% of the votes in West Tripura.BJP supporters celebrate BJP’s win in the Tripura 2018 assembly election in Agartala. Credit: PTILeadership changeThe Congress’s resurgence is down to a leadership change in February. Thereafter, it rolled off a comprehensive strategy to get back a couple of veteran party leaders who joined the BJP ahead of the assembly polls, saying they were utterly frustrated with the national leadership’s unwillingness to give a fight to the Left. The BJP took advantage of this demoralising of senior candidates and ushered them in, helping it also take away the Congress’s votes.The newly elected state Pradesh Congress Committee chief, Pradyot Manikya Barman, led from the front in these elections. He succeeded in injecting much-needed vigor into party workers to compete with the BJP’s enthusiastic ground workers. It also led to ugly confrontations between the two contenders, leaving several party workers, mainly from the Congress, grievously injured.In April, his sister Pragya, the party candidate from Tripura East, was attacked by a BJP supporter. Barman, after hearing that the accused was arrested, reached the police station and slapped him in full glare of CCTV cameras. While his opponents took to social media to criticise him for taking the law into his hands, his supporters lauded him for being a “force that would not step back in the face of a threat”. He also mobilised the party’s national leaders to accompany him to the ECI to lodge complaints against the BJP for allegedly misusing state machinery and practicing electoral misconduct.Also Read: Opposition Parties Demand Fresh Polls in Tripura WestHis campaign, “Poila Jati, Ulo Party’ (First the community, then the party), was tailored keeping in mind the opposition to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in the tribal areas. It resonated to a considerable extent.Three days after the results were out, Barman, in a Facebook post, announced that he would donate Rs 10 lakhs from his personal account to the party in order to build a corpus to help treat the party men allegedly injured by BJP workers after winning the polls. He also urged other senior party members and former state presidents to act similarly. PCC vice president Pijush Biswas also donated Rs 1 lakh for the corpus. On May 27, he started a social media campaign seeking funds from public to treat his party men injured in post-poll violence.The campaign was seemingly devised to keep the party workers’ morale high. Barman also reportedly said that his party would soon approach the Supreme Court to look into the post-poll violence in the state.Though the assembly polls are a good four years away in Tripura, Barman seems to have drawn the battle lines against the BJP, pushing the Left forces further down in the ladder of possible opponents to the ruling party.
