Tripura Election 2023: 10 Facts About BJP’s Bid to Retain Power in Multi-Cornered Fight
Tripura election 2023: The formation of a new political party, Tipra Motha, by former royal Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, with a key demand of Greater Tipraland, could complicate matters for the ruling BJP in the upcoming Tripura Assembly Elections.
Today, Tripura is going to the polls in a three-way contest, with the ruling BJP aiming for a big win. Meanwhile, the CPM has surprisingly allied with the Congress. The newly-formed Tipra Motha party will hold significant power if the election results in a hung assembly.
Here’s a quick summary of the top 10 points on this major story:
10 Facts on Tripura Election 2023
- In 2018, the BJP made history by winning 36 out of 60 seats in Tripura, breaking the 30-year-long rule of the CPM.
- Despite having enough seats to form a majority government, the BJP formed an alliance with the Indigenous Progressive Front of Tripura (IPFT), which won eight seats, to guard against defections.
- The CPM, which ruled Tripura for over three decades, has formed an alliance with the Congress for the upcoming election. The Left Front will contest 47 seats, while the Congress has been allotted 13 seats, with four-time Chief Minister Manik Sarkar leading the campaign.
- The CPM won 16 seats in the 2018 elections, while the Congress, the main opposition in the previous assembly, failed to win any seats. The CPM hopes the alliance with the Congress will add votes in around 13 seats. However, the alliance has caused surprise among the Kerala units of both parties, where they have been sworn enemies for decades.
- The new party, Tipra Motha, formed by former royal Pradyot Kishore Debbarma with the demand for Greater Tipraland, may complicate matters for the BJP. Although the BJP has the local party IPFT on its side, its hold on some seats has weakened over the last five years. In the 2021 Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council polls, IPFT was wiped out, and it had to accept only five seats to contest in this election.
- The BJP initially tried to establish a relationship with the Tipra Motha, but its efforts were rejected. After the BJP announced that it would not permit any division of Tripura, the Tipra Motha also took a hard line, throwing back the accusation of being the “B Team of CPM-Congress” made by Union Minister Amit Shah at the BJP.
- Contesting on 42 seats, Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, leader of Tipra Motha, dismissed the BJP as a “B-Team of many parties in India,” citing instances in different states. His party, demanding Greater Tipraland, is unwilling to compromise.
- Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam Chief Minister and the BJP’s representative in the northeast, is confident of the party’s improved performance in all three northeastern states holding elections in this round. He predicts a more critical political role for the BJP in Meghalaya, retaining power in Tripura with a more significant majority, and forming the government again in Nagaland with the NDPP.
- The Tripura Chief Minister, Manik Saha, anticipates a “tsunami” of support for the Tripura BJP.
- The upcoming elections in Meghalaya and Nagaland are scheduled for February 27th, with the vote count set to take place on March 2nd.
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