In Tripura, Congress and Left parties are contesting Lok Sabha elections together for the first time.
Agartala: For the first time in the 72-year electoral history of Tripura, Left parties and Congress are contesting a Lok Sabha election together to take on the BJP. However, both the traditional rivals had jointly challenged the ruling party in last year’s assembly elections. The main contest for the high-profile Tripura West Lok Sabha seat will be between BJP candidate and former Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb and state Congress president Ashish Kumar Saha, who is the joint candidate of the ‘INDIA’ block.
BJP had demolished CPM’s fort
In fact, Congress president Saha and sitting Congress MLA Sudip Roy Barman left the party in February 2022 after being elected to the state assembly on BJP ticket in March 2018. BJP came to power in Tripura for the first time after 25 years by handing a humiliating defeat to the CPM-led Left Front. In last year’s assembly elections, Saha and Barman had contested as Congress candidates against the BJP, but Saha lost, while Barman retained his seat.
The last time Congress won Tripura was in 1988.
Deb, who resigned as chief minister on May 14, 2022, on the instructions of BJP central leaders, had dropped Barman from his council of ministers in May 2019 after a prolonged internal feud. Let us tell you that the Left Front has been fighting every election against Congress since 1952. Congress last came to power in Tripura in 1988 by defeating the Left parties. In last year’s assembly elections, the Left Front, which contested the assembly elections in a seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress, had won 11 seats while the country’s oldest party had won just 3 seats.
CPM has won Tripura West seat 11 times
Of the two Lok Sabha seats in Tripura, Tripura West and Tripura East, the electoral focus has always been on the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat, which was won by the CPM 11 times since 1952. Congress won this seat four times in the Lok Sabha elections of 1957, 1967, 1989 and 1991. BJP candidate and Union minister Pratima Bhowmik won the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat for the first time in 2019 after the BJP came to power in 2018 in alliance with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT). This time BJP replaced Bhowmik and fielded Deb, who is currently a Rajya Sabha member.
There has been a big decline in the voter base of CPM
Voters from tribal and scheduled caste communities play an important role in the electoral politics of Tripura. Out of total 60 assembly seats, 30-30 seats come in Tripura West and Tripura East Lok Sabha seats. Of these, 20 seats are reserved for tribals and 10 seats are reserved for the Scheduled Caste community. Of the 30 assembly constituencies falling in Tripura West Lok Sabha seat, 7 are reserved for tribals and 5 for Scheduled Castes. Political expert Shekhar Dutta said that the left parties including CPM have been losing in consecutive elections since 2018 due to the massive decline in voter base among the tribals and SC community.
‘There are still difficulties for the Left in Tripura’
“Apart from organizational decline, leadership crisis and anti-incumbency factors still persist as the Left Front was in power in Tripura from 1978 to 1988 and again from 1993-2018,” Dutta said. With new faces, he will have to rebuild the organization among both tribals and non-tribals to face the challenge from BJP. (IANS)
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