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New Delhi: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) may have made a mark in the Tripura civic polls, the results of which were declared Late last month, the but untold story of the election was the virtual collapse of the Congress, which was the dominant opposition party until three years ago.
In the municipal elections held last month, the Congress got two percent votes, which was a huge drop from the Congress. In the December 2015 civic polls, it was 25 per cent successful. In the last municipal elections, the party had won 13 wards. This year, it drew a blank.
There are 334 wards in 14 urban bodies in the state, of which the BJP won 112 unopposed and elections were held in 222. Out of 222, BJP won 217 with a vote share of 59 per cent, CPI(M) won three seats, while TMC and Tipraha Swadeshi Progressive Regional Alliance (Tipra) shared one seat each.
In the 2013 Tripura Assembly elections, which was won by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) with a thumping majority, the Congress won six seats and secured a vote share of 36.5 percent.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the party did not win any of the two seats in the state, but its voteshare was pegged at 15.2 per cent – the second highest. The survey data shows that while the CPI(M) retained its position as the single largest party, the BJP managed to garner 5.7 per cent votes.
In the 2015 municipal elections in the state, the Congress still remained the dominant opposition with a vote share of 25.3 per cent. While CPI(M) remained the single largest party in terms of seats and voteshare, BJP was in the lead with 14 per cent vote share till then.
It slipped to the third position in 2018 as the BJP won the assembly election to form its first government in the state and the CPI(M) was voted out.
Congress’s downward spiral
The declining trend of Congress started from 2015, since then the party has seen its ups and downs.
Its voteshare dropped to 1.79 per cent in the 2018 assembly elections, which forced it to introspect and devise a new strategy. The BJP won 36 of the 60 assembly seats in the state with a vote share of 43.6 per cent.
The CPI(M), which had led the state for more than two decades, Won 16 seats, but with a voteshare of 44.35 per cent, it provided a face-to-face competition to the BJP. Congress moved to third place.
Congress ahead of 2019 general elections appointed Royal descendant Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma as its head of state. In the Lok Sabha elections, the party’s voteshare rose to 25.3 per cent, higher than the 15.2 per cent it achieved in 2014, returning to the number two spot for a brief period in terms of vote share.
This, several party workers said, was due to Debbarma’s loyal vote-base among indigenous communities in Tripura. finally debbarma Relieve Congress started TIPRA over leadership differences.
After the party’s crushing defeat in this year’s municipal electionsOp party leaders say that they are strengthening the cadre by accusing the BJP of rigging.
“Our party has seen many ups and downs recently. A person who has no political expertise (referring to Piyush Biswas, who Relieve party) in August 2021 before I was given the charge,” Tripura Congress chief Birjit Sinha said.
“However, now we are training our workers at the grassroots level. BJP is involved in massive electoral rigging and people will finally see the real face of (TMC chief) Mamata Banerjee. We will make a good comeback.”
The party’s only stronghold (if it can be called one) is Kailashahar in Unakoti district, where it has got 13 per cent more votes than other urban bodies. Yet, it was much lower than the BJP’s 53 per cent and the CPI(M) 29.2 per cent.
Read also: Trinamool sees a ray of hope in Tripura civic polls, alleging rigging with BJP’s victory
TMC secured second position on 120 seats
Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev said the Trinamool Congress (TMC) was majorly invested in the 2021 municipal elections and the party wants to make it big in the state – which has a significant Bengali-speaking population – in the 2023 assembly elections.
A member of TMC’s operations Committee For Tripura, Dev played a key role in the election campaigns. Dev quit the Congress earlier this year and joined the TMC.
The party had so far not had a councilor in the northeastern state, let alone an MLA or an MP, even though it contested the 2015 municipal elections, the 2018 assembly elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Tripura. Its voteshare failed to cross 0.4 per cent.
Cut to 2021, the TMC achieved an overall voteshare of 16.4 percent – a consideration if all 222 seats were to go to polls. Electoral data shows that BJP stood at 59 per cent, CPI(M) 18.13 per cent and Congress 2.07 per cent.
The TMC, however, contested only 120 of those 222 seats.
Figures from those 120 wards show the Trinamool as the second-largest party – with a vote share of 19.9 per cent, well below the BJP’s 57 per cent, but slightly higher than the CPI(M)’s 16.8 per cent. In those 120 seats, the vote share of the Congress has come down to 1.74 per cent.
Congress and CPI(M) did not field candidates in many of these seats. While the CPI(M) contested on 192 seats, the Congress contested on 92 seats.
“We see these numbers as massive gains. We have done a great job in the state in just three months. Earlier, our presence was negligible,” said Dev. “Also, there was violence and election rigging by the BJP. We are strengthening our workers and we will definitely get a big victory in the 2023 assembly elections.
A closer look at the figures of the 120 seats the TMC had contested shows that the party has captured everyone’s share on different scales. Compared to the total figures (for 222 seats), the figures for 120 seats show that the vote share of the BJP has decreased by about 1.9 percentage points, that of the CPI(M) by 1.32 percentage points and that of the Congress by 0.33 percentage points.
With the arrival of TMC, Congress has now come at number four in Tripura.
BJP’s dominance
In the 2015 Tripura municipal elections, the BJP secured a vote share of 14 per cent, even though it failed to sway the Congress from second place.
Election data shows that the CPI(M) won 278 out of 310 wards, with a vote share of over 60 per cent.
Eventually, the BJP gained huge popularity, winning the state in the 2018 assembly elections with 43.6 per cent votes, improving it to 49 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The CPI(M) has also seen a marked decline, even though it is not as badly crushed as the Congress at this time.
The Left garnered 44.35 per cent votes in the 2018 Assembly elections and 17.3 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which was less than the Congress voteshare for the first time, according to poll data.
In the 2021 municipal elections, senior CPI(M) leader and former minister, Pabitra Kar, said that the party has managed to retain its loyal vote base and in the times to come, it plans to expand. While he alleged election rigging and hooliganism by the BJP which, he said, prevented many loyal Left voters from casting their votes, he also expressed concern over further division of opposition votes in the state with the entry of the TMC.
Their concerns are visible in numbers.
The collective voteshare of TMC, CPI(M) and Congress outperformed the BJP in several wards across the state, especially in Abbasa in Agartala, Sonamura Nagar and Dhalai.
“As a party, we are trying our best to recover significantly in Tripura. But we need a clearer picture of the bigger game-plan of TMC with Mamata Banerjee expanding her footprints in multiple states,” said Kar. “In Agartala, if we take out 6-7 wards, we will have a face-off with the TMC.”
Agartala (with 51 wards that went to polls), the state’s largest urban area bordering Bangladesh, became the only one in which TMC came second and CPI(M) third.
(Edited by Arun Prashant)
Read also: TMC causing trouble in Tripura, worse than Taliban, says Union minister Pratima Bhowmik
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