Jaydip Chakrabarti
In the 2023 elections, the Leftists drew a blank 20 ST reserved seats which was once an invincible Left Fort forte. The left movement started in Tripura from the hill areas – with the support of tribal communities.
Many of the yesteryear leaders of the CPM – to name a few, late Biren Datta, Nripen Chakraborty, Dasharath Debbarma, Suddhnya Debbarma and Aghore Debbarma – emerged out of the Leftists’ movement in the hills and established long Left era in the State.
Party’s organization among the tribal communities was so strong that CPM leaders, prior to any Assembly Polls, would start counting the number of winning seats excluding 20 ST reserved seats as they were confident that all of the 20 seats would be in Left Front’s kitty – and so was the reality.
The situation changed drastically in the 2018 Assembly polls in which Leftists bagged only two seats – Jolaibari and Manu – out of the 20 ST seats. The remaining 18 seats were won by BJP and IPFT.
The 2023 Assembly polls witnessed political decimation of the Leftists as it had been completely washed out in the ST areas.
In fact, the indication of the Left’s total annihilation was sounded in TTAADC polls
where the party suffered a humiliating defeat and drew a blank.
Left Front’s seat-sharing ally Congress never had any concrete organization among the hill people.
Earlier it depended on TUJS and later on INPT which merged with TIPRA Motha later.
With the total defeat of the CPM-Congress in ST reserved seats and IPFT struggling for its survival – TIPRA Motha and BJP are now vying with each other in gaining control over the ST reserved seats.
In the 2023 Assembly polls, TIPRA Motha won 13 seats while BJP clinched victory in 6 and its ally IPFT in one.
In the past five-and-a-half decades, over a dozen tribal based parties in Tripura tried to play a crucial role in the state’s politics but due to their issue-based politics sans any ideology, they became nonexistent after their issues were resolved or when they raised irrelevant demands.
In June 1967, the Tripura Upajati Juba Samity (TUJS) was formed as the first major tribal-based political party raising some tribal-centric demands including the creation of the tribal autonomous body.
The party first got four seats in the 1978 elections and in 1988 it was an ally of the Congress with both parties in alliance governing the state for five years (1988 to 1993) before the CPM-led Left Front government
returned to power after five years.
TMP’s rapid success caused a change in the political spectrum of Tripura.
The party, since 2021, has been demanding the elevation of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) areas by granting a ‘Greater Tipraland State’ or a separate state under Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution which BJP, CPM and Congress are vehemently opposing.
(Jaydip Chakrabarti can be contacted at [email protected])
(First published in Tripura Times)
