The sharp dip in the vote share of the CPI(M) in the Tripura Assembly election has raised several questions on its strategy to align with the Congress, which on the other hand has benefited from the alliance.
The vote share of the CPI(M) fell to 24.6% from the 42% in 2018, the sharpest drop among all the political parties in the fray. The party’s seat share also reduced to 11 from the 16 in 2018.
The Congress’s vote share, however, rose 6.7% from the 1.8% it registered in the 2018 election. The party also saw its tally jump to 3 seats from the nil in 2018.
Speaking to The Hindubefore the election, party general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the alliance was finalised “not so much as a conscious decision by both the parties to pool their votes”, instead it was worked out because of the “pressure from below”. It was the people’s demand, he said, that necessitated the alliance.
The results once again bring the CPI(M)‘s contention to the vote that while they are able to transfer their votes to the ally, a similar counter transfer often does not fructify. The results will strengthen the arguments against any alliance or electoral understanding with the Congress, which the Kerala unit of the party has been staunchly opposed to.
While, accepting the results, the party’s Polit Bureau, in a statement, said that that BJP had managed only a small majority despite “spending unprecedented amounts of money and other malpractices”.
The BJP’s vote share has also dipped by 4.6% in this poll. “The CPI(M) greets all those who have voted for the Left Front and Opposition candidates by rejecting the BJP. The Polit Bureau congratulates the thousands of cadres and workers of the CPI(M) and Left Front who, after braving the repression unleashed on them in the past five years, came forward courageously to conduct the election campaign and to reach out to the people, whom they had been deprived of meeting for a long time,” the Polit Bureau said. It, however, remained silent on the own sharp decline in its vote share.
