The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has been able to secure a majority on its own by getting 33 seats. But another party that stole the limelight is the TIPRA Motha of Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma, scion of the erstwhile Tripura royal family.
It has emerged as the second largest party by getting 13 seats — 2 more than CPI(M), the main Opposition party in the state assembly in the last five years. Motha, a new party formed two years ago, has got an impressive vote share of 19.7 per cent. On the other hand, CPI(M) got 24.62 per cent while its new partner Congress secured 8.56 per cent.
Motha's Impressive Performance In Some Areas
In the Takarjala (ST) seat falling under Sipahijala district, Tipra Motha’s candidate Biswajit Kalai secured 86.81 per cent and won with a huge margin of 32,455 votes — which is the highest victory margin by any candidate in this election. In the Mandaibazar (ST) seat of West Tripura district, Motha’s Swapna Debbarma polled 66.35 per cent and emerged victorious with a thumping margin of 21,649 votes — and this is the second highest victory margin.
The third highest margin of this election also belongs to Motha’s Asharambari (ST) seat candidate Animesh Debbarma, who is also the deputy Chief Executive Member (CEM) of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC). Animesh got 66.56 per cent votes and won with a thumping 18,328 votes. The autonomous tribal body of the state is currently ruled by Motha.
Didn't Perform As It Expected In The Hills
An analysis of the poll results makes it clear that Motha hasn’t performed well the way it had expected in the hills. While in some constituencies in the hills the party’s candidates performed extremely well leaving no space for any contest, it failed to leave a mark in other constituencies. In the 2018 polls, the BJP-IPFT coalition swept the tribal belt by winning 18 out of 20 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes but despite all the hype, Motha got 13.
It got more than 50 per cent of the votes only in eight ST seats — Simna, Mandaibazar, Takarjala, Golaghati, Ramchandraghat, Asharambari, Ampinagar and Karamchara. However, the BJP-IPFT alliance got more than 50 per cent votes in 13 seats in the last elections.
One of the heavyweights of Motha, Purna Chandra Jamatia, who is the CEM of TTAADC, lost to state tribal affairs minister Rampada Jamatia from the Bagma (ST) seat. In this seat, Motha got 34.6 per cent of the votes while the BJP+ got 40.04 per cent. The CPM candidate, former state minister Naresh Chandra Jamatia, secured 25.08 per cent.
Clearly, anti-BJP votes got divided between Motha and the Left and this directly benefited the saffron party. This should ring alarm bells for the ruling party of TTAADC as it failed to pool maximum votes in this seat where the CEM himself was the contestant. Like Bagma, in 3 ST seats — Santirbazar, Krishnapur and Chawmanu — Motha lost to BJP as the Left candidates grabbed a sizable portion of the anti-BJP votes.
Motha’s Strategy To Become Kingmaker Failed
Tipra Motha was quite confident that this time there would be a hung assembly and it would become the kingmaker. As a result of this, the party decided to contest in 22 non-ST seats, apart from fielding candidates in all the 20 ST seats. It had actually kept the doors open for any post-poll alliance with both BJP and Left-Congress. However, with the BJP securing 32 seats on its own, all hopes of Motha becoming the kingmaker got washed away.
In fact, in the many non-ST seats, Motha ate into the anti-BJP votes and ultimately helped the BJP-led NDA. Of the 22 non-ST contesting seats, Motha came third in Amarpur, Bagbassa, Chandipur, Rajnagar, Teliamura, Khayerpur, Kamalpur, Panisagar, Surma, Kakraban-Salgara, Dhanpur, Majlishpur, Kamalasagar, Bishalgarh and Pabiachara. In these 15 seats, its vote percentage was more than the BJP’s winning margin. Of these, nine were won by the CPM last time. This time the Left lost as Motha split the anti-BJP votes.
While it is true that all the votes of Motha can’t be clubbed as anti-BJP, it can’t be denied that the majority of them were clearly so. Another fact that can’t be denied is that if IPFT was one of the major factors in bringing the BJP to power in the state last time, this time it was Tripra Motha which played the crucial role in helping the saffron party to retain power by splitting the Opposition votes. Had Motha been conservative in fielding candidates in the non-ST seats, the results would have been different and there would have been a hung assembly as wished by the party.
Sustaining The Momentum A Challenge For Motha
During the elections, Pradyot repeatedly said that without the help of Motha, no party would form the government. But in reality this didn’t happen due to the party's wrong strategy. Now, the party faces the challenge to keep the momentum alive. The history of the state’s tribal parties says that these parties have failed to sustain the momentum for a long time. The recent example is IPFT, which emerged in the tribal belt in 2018 and in this election, it has almost disappeared. In 2018, IPFT’s vote share was 7.38 per cent and in this election this dropped to only 1.26 per cent.
In the tribal belt, the BJP seems to have almost retained its vote share it got in the last ADC polls of 2021. Motha’s challenge is not only to keep the flock of its MLAs together but also to keep its base on the ground intact from the ruling BJP. Motha has been accusing the BJP government of depriving the ADC from its legitimate funds. Whether this allegation is true or not, this may result in a churning among a section of the party's base to look for the party ruling the state.
In the past, the same thing happened with the then ruling CPM as it kept accusing the Centre for not providing adequate funds to the state and this led to a churning among a section of its voters to opt for the party ruling at the Centre, the BJP, in 2018.
On the other hand, the Left, which this time failed to win any ST seat, also seems to have gained some votes in the tribal belt compared to the last ADC polls. Also, a section of Motha’s base on the ground is from Gana Mukti Parishad, CPM’s tribal wing. This section moved towards the Motha to fight against BJP. With the Left trying to get its tribal votes back with Jitendra Chaudhury as its face and Motha not performing as it had expected, there are chances of disgruntled Motha voters moving back to the Left.
The author is a political commentator.
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