Agartala: In a bid to retry the attempt at an alliance in West Bengal during the last assembly elections, the Left Front and Congress approached a modified model to fight against the saffron party in Tripura on Thursday, where 28,23 lakh electorates would decide the fate of 259 candidates, including 58 independents, across 3328 polling stations across 60 assembly constituencies.
Before 2018, Tripura’s bipolar politics were between left- parties and the Congress, and after that, the Left and the BJP reshaped the political landscape in the 2023 election between left-leaning parties and non-left-leaning parties.
with a 2% vote share in the 2018 elections. The BJP won with a 36-seat majority and a 43.59 per cent vote share after Congress shifted its entire support to them.
Significantly, 36.53 percent of vote-share holders in Congress in 2018 decreased to 1.79 per cent.
However, BJP erosion was visible in the 2019 general election when the Congress vote share rose to 25.34 per cent and it has been continuing to date.
Despite the CPI-M claiming to retain 40 per cent of the vote, the remaining voters are believed to be split between the BJP, Congress, and TIPRA Motha.
The Congress claimed that more than half of their supporters who had switched to the BJP prior to 2018 had returned to the party with Sudip Roybarman.
As a result, the vote share of CPI-M and Congress together posed a challenge to the victory of the BJP, besides its factional feud.
The Left Front-Congress stitched a seat adjustment deal as a practise run for the 2024 general election, according to party president Birjit Sinha.
The arch-rivals for five decades, the CPI-M and the Congress, have joined hands to take on the BJP in Tripura in a modified manner after the attempt of the CPM-Congress Mahajot failed to yield in the 2021 assembly poll in West Bengal.
The parties shared the seats instead of forging an alliance in light of the Bengal experience.
The Left Front’s main constituent CPM fielded candidates in 43 seats, its other constituents CPI, Forward Bloc, and RSP are contesting one in each seat while Congress was allotted 13 seats.
Both the Left Front and Congress extended support to an independent candidate, a renowned lawyer, and human rights activist Purusattam Roybarman aiming to ensure one to one fight against BJP candidates.
Both CPM and Congress tried to convince royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarman to join them against BJP and CPM was ready to sacrifice 17 tribal reserved seats for TIPRA Motha from its allotted 43 seats.
Pradyot reportedly declined to come in for the adjustment but didn’t field any candidates against CPM state secretary Jitendra Choudhury, Congress president Birjit Sinha, two Congress stalwarts Sudip Roybarman, and Ashish Kumar Saha, and independent candidate Roybarman. Pradyot was found campaigning for them.
