Dissecting the Verdict of Tripura Assembly Election 2023

With the verdict of the 13th Tripura assembly election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained power for the second consecutive term in the state. Although the BJP-led alliance had won a historic victory in the 2018 elections, ending the 25-year rule of the Left Front government in the state, the high-voltage triangular con­test between the BJP–Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M])–Congress and Tipra Motha Party (TMP) this time turned out to be really interesting. In a voting turnout of 89.8%, the BJP won 32 seats with a vote share of 38.97% in the 60-member assembly, while its ally, IPFT, could wrest only the Jolaibari seat in southern Tripura. The ruling BJP had contested 55 seats and IPFT in six seats. While CPI[M] secured only 11 seats with a vote share of 24.62%, its ally, the Congress, wrested three seats with a vote share of 8.56%. However, the emergence of the newly formed TMP, as the second largest party winning 13 seats with a vote share of 20.10%, is particularly noteworthy in this verdict. In fact, the party won all the 13 seats in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) constituencies (Table 1). It has emerged as a new political entity articulating and representing the minority tribal interest, thereby replacing the prominence of the IPFT as a tribal party.