The vote share of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections has risen from 1.54% in 2013 to 43% in 2018. But the biggest gainer has been its ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), a tribal party.
The IPFT, led by Narendra Chandra Debbarma, former Director of All India Radio centre here, was one of the worst performers in 2013, getting a paltry 0.46% of the votes and all its 17 candidates forfeiting deposit.
The alliance with the BJP has paid dividends for the IPFT this time; it won eight of the nine seats contested for a strike rate of almost 89. The IPFT received 7.5% of the votes, which is about 2% more than the vote share of nine parties, including the Congress, the CPI and the Trinamool Congress.
In the process, the IPFT has left a more seasoned tribal party and former Congress ally — Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT) — far behind.
Fine balancing act
“The BJP-IPFT partnership was a fine balancing act. While the BJP managed to sell its ‘one Tripura’ commitment to appeal to the Bengali majority voters, the IPFT toned down its separate statehood (Twipraland) demand depending on where it campaigned,” Pranab Sarkar, a political analyst, said.
By winning 35 of the 50 seats it contested, the BJP registered a strike rate of 70. This is slightly better than its strike rate of 60 in Nagaland, where it won 12 of the 20 seats contested.
Few expected the party with a Hindutva image to perform as it did in Christian-majority Nagaland.
The BJP also outshone its stronger regional ally, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party, that won 18 seats for a strike rate of 45.
Among the other parties that performed fairly well are the Naga People’s Front, winning 26 of 58 seats contested, and the National People’s Party, which won 19 of the 53 seats contested.
NOTA fares well
The none of the above, or NOTA, option on EVM machines fared better than at least two political parties in the three north-eastern States where Assembly elections were held on February 18 and 27.
In Tripura, 23,735 voters opted for NOTA. This works out to 1% of the total votes polled.
NOTA scored higher than eight political parties in the State. They include the Communist Party of India,the Trinamool Congress and the INPT.
In Meghalaya, 0.9% of the voters chose NOTA. This is more than double of what the Trinamool Congress managed and fractionally more than what the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement, a regional party, got.
The scene was no different in Nagaland where NOTA notched up 0.6% of the votes.