Some 25.6 lakh voters will exercise their franchise on Sunday to decide if Tripura will stay with the Left Front or take a right turn responding to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s call for change.
Election will be held in 59 of the State’s 60 seats. Polling in the reserved Charilam seat has been rescheduled on March 12 after the death of CPI(M) candidate Ramendra Narayan Debbarma.
Political experts say the campaign for Mandate 2018 has been the most intense since 1988 when the Congress, in alliance with a tribal party, wrested power from the Left Front. But the Communists were back in 1993 and ruled for five successive terms riding on Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s image of one of India’s cleanest politicians.
The BJP, desperate to conquer Tripura after Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur in the eight-State Northeast, has put up the stiffest challenge for the Left Front in 25 years. It claimed to have studied the CPI(M)’s cadre-based structure to penetrate the red bastion besides targeting Mr. Sarkar for presenting a “fake image” all these years.
BJP confident
“The chalo paltai (Let’s change) campaign has caught on because the people are fed up with Marxist control on their lives. We are confident of victory,” State BJP president Biplab Kumar Deb, contesting the Banamalipur seat, said.
“If they are so confident, why did (Narendra) Modi and his Cabinet colleagues have to spend days to campaign? They mobilised money, muscle and media power besides unleashing RSS, VHP and others in a small State like Tripura. This shows they are worried,” Mr. Sarkar, seeking his fifth straight win from his pet Dhanpur seat, said.
‘Desperate bid’
The BJP’s apprehension is also apparent from its tie-up with the Indigenous People’s Front of Twipra (IPFT) that is backed by a banned extremist group, Mr. Sarkar said. The IPFT, contesting nine of the 20 seats reserved for the State’s 19 tribes, had been demanding a separate State for the indigenous communities.
But even the staunchest of Communist supporters feel the BJP, which claimed to have occupied the space vacated by other non-Left parties, could be a force to reckon with this time. The BJP has primarily replaced a beleaguered Congress as the main challenger.
Rural reach
The BJP’s chances depend on the degree of penetration in rural areas where the Left Front has a stranglehold. Of the 60 seats, 36 are rural while 19 are semi-urban and five urban.
The BJP has been focussed on Tripura since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when it bagged only 5.7% of the votes. In the 2013 Assembly elections, the party’s vote share was only 1.5% compared to the 48.11% the CPI(M) and its communist allies had polled. The Congress polled 36.53% votes in 2013.
