Saffron sarkar in Tripura: BJP creates history in the Left vs Right fight

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday clinched the Northeastern state of Tripura, the only red bastion other than Kerala, ending the Left rule of 25 years and making it clear that the saffron party’s next target, ahead of the big battle in 2019, will be West Bengal, Kerala and Odisha. The three states, put together, elect 83 members of Parliament to Lok Sabha; here the BJP’s current strength is just three — two from West Bengal and one from Odisha. The BJP which managed a meagre 1.54% vote-share in the 2013 assembly poll in Tripura and had never opened its account in the state, surprised everyone this time after it registered a resounding victory with a two-thirds majority, in what’s dubbed as India’s first truly Right versus Left political contest.

Tripura has a majority of Bengali-speaking people and its social fabric akin to West Bengal’s. The BJP may try to replicate Battle Tripura in Kerala, a state being ruled by the Left and where the party may first attempt to snatch the base of the Congress before targeting the ideologically driven core vote-bank of the Left.

How did BJP engineer this victory, clinching 43 seats with its ally? Flashback to 2014: When the party sounded out Sunil Deodhar, the campaign manager for candidate Narendra Modi in Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, to become the party’s Tripura in-charge, he was reluctant. Deodhar preferred Meghalaya: he was a former RSS pracharak in the state for eight years and fluent in Khasi dialect. But the party leadership prevailed over him, arguing that the BJP must shake up the Left bastion where the CPM-led government was ruling since 1993 with Chief Minister Manik Sarkar going from strength to strength, thanks to his pro-poor image. Deodhar gave in, and shifted his base to the capital city of Agartala where he has been residing in a rented accommodation for the last two years.

Statistically speaking, the challenge was gigantic. In 2013 assembly poll, the BJP managed 1.54% vote share while contesting in 50 out of 60 seats, as against the CPM’s 48.1% from 55 seats. And here’s what it is now: at the time of writing this article, the BJP’s vote share shot up to 43%, and when added to that of its ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), the vote share is 50.5%, well ahead of the CPM’s 42.7%.

In fact, the party concentrated on two broad pockets; one, in 20 reserved seats for Schedule Tribes where the party sensed that anti-Left sentiments were growing louder; and two, the BJP went for a rapid expansion of its base in Congress strongholds, mainly urban Tripura. That the BJP’s tribal ally, IPFT, won eight seats out of nine that it contested in, has proven that the party’s chief strategists — national general secretary Ram Madhav and NEDA convenor Himanta Biswa Sarma are right in gauging the political mood. Also, aligning with a key tribal party has helped the BJP position itself as pro-tribal party, and its effects were evident in non-tribal seats as well.

Meanwhile, the Congress’ vote share has fallen below 2%, from a smart 36.5% in 2013 (while contesting in 48 seats, unlike in 59 this time), indicating how it’s the Congress, not the Left, which gave the BJP a decisive victory on a platter.

Another strategy that worked for the BJP is its decision to target Manik Sarkar. The BJP was clear from day one that until it targeted him, it won’t be able to galvanise the anti-Manik Sarkar voters. So, whether it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who addressed four election rallies, or his party heavyweights — national president Amit Shah, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath — everyone hit hard at Sarkar on various counts: rampant corruption, political murders, unemployment and the lackadaisical attitude towards state government employees by not implementing the 7th Central Pay Commission.

The result? The BJP could create a momentum and made a history which the Congress in 2013 failed to do, despite the party and its then tribal ally, Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), cornering 44% vote-share, perhaps indicating that there was an anti-incumbency wave against Sarkar five years ago as well.