BJP supporters celebrate in front of a cut-out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Photo: Reuters)
Of all the statistics that underline the BJP’s storming of Tripura, one of the most telling comes from the 10 seats that the Congress had won in 2013. Such was the party’s decimation that its votes in all these 10 seats combined was less than the average it had polled here in 2013.
From an average 19,768 votes in 2013 — it had polled 1.97 lakh votes in these 10 seats —the Congress totalled just 16,064 Saturday. In terms of vote share, the Congress dropped from 47 per cent to 4 per cent in these 10 seats, as compared to a drop from 37 per cent to less than 2 per cent across the state. The Congress had won its 10 seats with an average margin of 2,180 votes. This time, it did not finish even in second place in any of these seats, nor anywhere else, did the Congress finish even in second place.
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These 10 seats provide an illustration of how the BJP, in snatching the state from the Left Front, relegated the Left to the Congress’s former position of principal Opposition, and how it sent the Congress to a position not too different from the BJP’s own five years ago —when the latter had forfeited its deposits in 49 of the 50 seats it had contested.
That election, the BJP polled 1.87 per cent in those 50 seats, and 1.54 per cent overall. This time, its vote share is 43 per cent, which crosses the halfway mark once its ally IPFT’s 7.5 per cent is added. The BJP contested 51 seats, the IPFT nine. Although both parties gained their seats primarily from the CPM — which had more seats to lose — it was the Congress that lost the most votes, with the CPM’s vote share dropping only by five percentage points, from 48 per cent to a little under 43 per cent, nearly as high as the BJP’s.
The BJP’s average victory margin, at 4,361 votes, was far ahead of the CPM’s average of 3,282. In 2013, when the BJP was barely present, the CPM had averaged 3,839 in its margins, a long way ahead of the Congress’s 2,180. The average of all 60 constituencies was 3,561.
This time, the average victory margin in the 59 results declared is 4,201. It is the IPFT that has the best average margin at 5,338 votes, with eight victories in the nine seats it contested, the best strike rate.
Head to head, the BJP snatched half the CPM’s seats and all but one of the 10 seats held by the Congress. Of the 49 seats the CPM won in 2013, votes for Charilam will be counted on March 15. In the remaining 48, the BJP won 25 and its ally IPFT 8, while the CPM retained 15. The Congress surrendered nine of its 10 seats to the BJP and one to the CPM, taking the latter’s tally to 16.
The IPFT’s eight victories came in seats reserved for STs. The BJP, which contested the remaining 11 ST seats, won seven while the CPM won three, Charilam being the 11th.
Tripura’s 20 tribal seats had voted overwhelmingly for the Left in 2013, the CPM winning 18 and the CPI one (Santirbazar), while the Congress had won Karmachara. Both of those seats have gone to the BJP.
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