Tripura Polls: BJP Releases First List of 48 Candidates, 23% Representation to Women

The BJP on Saturday announced its first list of 48 candidates for the Tripura assembly elections, reserving its declaration of candidates for some tribal seats. The list has 23 percent women’s representation with union minister Pratima Bhoumik being fielded from Dhanpur, a stronghold of the state’s longest-serving chief minister Manik Sarkar, who has decided not to contest this time.

The first list has been finalised by the BJP central election committee. Only two days are left for the deadline to file nominations, but the saffron party has withheld the names of 12 candidates from seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes.

The name of former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb was missing from the first list, but his successor Manik Saha will be contesting from Town Bordowali. Deb’s constituency, Banamalipur, has been given to state president Rajiv Battacharjee. The Rajya Sabha MP, who stepped down as CM last year, had won the seat in the previous elections but it has been vacant since he left it to contest the elections to the Upper House of Parliament.

Bhoumik, who is the minister of state for social justice and empowerment, is fighting from Dhanpur. She has unsuccessfully contested against CPI(M) patriarch Manik Sarkar from this seat in the past, but he will not be contesting as he has decided to give the young brigade a chance. There are reports that he is dissatisfied with the alliance of the Left and Congress.

The tribal question

In the first list, the BJP has declared candidates for only eight tribal constituencies out of 20 in the 60-member legislative assembly.

Founder of Tripura Peoples’ Front (TPF), Patal Kanya Jamatia, who joined the BJP in March last year, has been fielded from Ampinagar constituency. Her entry into the BJP had marked a significant political development seen as part of a strategy to take on the TIPRA Motha, which has registered a meteoric rise in state politics, especially tribal, since its inception early last year.

Some of Jamatia’s comments have, however, roiled the tribals including her description of a separate tribal state demand – which forms the core of Tripura’s tribal parties’ political agenda – as a “small dream” and her praise for Deb as the “first honest Tripura CM” whom she had earlier called an “illegal immigrant”.

A tribal rights activist, she floated the TPF in June 2014. She has filed petitions before the Supreme Court over alleged large-scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh into the state, seeking the identification of those who came to Tripura after July 1948, their declaration as illegal immigrants and their deportation.

Deputy chief minister and strong tribal leader Jishnu Dev Varma will contest from Charilam, which is a seat reserved for ST.

The BJP had lost three of its MLAs – Dhananjoy Tripura, Brishaketu Debbarma and Mevar Kumar Jamatia – to the TIPRA Motha. While the speaker accepted the resignations of Dhananjoy and Mevar Kumar, Brishaketu’s was disqualified on account of a “procedural fault”.

The party was also in talks with TIPRA Motha leader Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma but failed to reach an expected negotiation, primarily due to the unacceptable ‘Greater Tipraland’ demand.

The BJP has, however, kept its door open by not declaring candidates for the 12 seats reserved for ST, which are a stronghold of the CPI(M) and TIPRA Motha.

Tripura BJP, TIPRA Motha and the central BJP had several rounds of meetings in Delhi a couple of days ago, but the stalemate could not be broken and Pradyot Kishore declared that the party will go it alone in its “one last fight”. The party will declare its list for at least 40 to 45 seats, including in Bengali-dominated areas, if the TIPRA Motha chief’s earlier remarks are to be believed.

‘Tripura has progressed under PM Modi’

Addressing a press conference in Delhi earlier in the day, BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra said along with development and progress since 2019, Tripura had registered immense progress under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Patra further said the state now had 53 percent accessibility to drinking water, 3.5 lakh houses for those who did not have a roof over their heads, 12.5 percent beneficiaries under Ayushman Bharat and so on. He highlighted the tribal sentiments and, on the importance of indigenous votes, said the new international terminal of the Agartala airport had been named after King Bir Bikram while 942 tribal schools, 58 schools for the Chakma tribe and 20 schools for the Kuki had been opened.

The issue of ‘Greater Tipraland’

The political narrative of the Tripura assembly elections is likely to be dominated by the discourse on the issue of ‘Greater Tipraland’, a separate statehood demand seeking to carve out the state’s tribal areas. The TIPRA Motha seeks a separate state for the indigenous peoples and this demand may affect results in 20 assembly seats, where tribals have considerable electoral clout.

‘Greater Tipraland’ is essentially an extension of ruling partner IPFT’s demand for ‘Tipraland’, a separate state carved out of the TTAADC (Tripura Tribal Area Autonomous District Council) area. The idea is not restricted only to Tripura and seeks to include Tripuris living in Assam, Mizoram, and Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.

The Congress also declared its shortlist of 17 candidates, which includes heavyweight Sudip Roy Burman, who won the Agartala constituency in a recently held bypoll. The CPI(M) had recently said an understanding of seat-sharing had been reached with its surprise ally, where the grand old party was supposed to get 13 seats.

Vote share in the 2018 elections

The CPI(M) won 16 seats in 2018 but its vote share, at 42.22 percent, was barely 1.4 percentage points lower than the BJP’s 43.59 percent. The Congress, however, did not win a single seat and its vote share was less than 2 percent.

The IPFT had a vote share of 7.38 percent, while the Trinamool Congress, which has launched a fiery campaign in Tripura this time, had a negligible 0.3 percent.

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