The ‘Red Fort’ has crumbled in Tripura
Bharatkumar Raut
Mid-aged Sunil Deodhar, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Pracharak for the last two decades and more, was confident six months ago, when the winds of State Assembly elections in Tripura had just started blowing in the North-Eastern State. “We will win the elections with a handsome margin”, he told me on telephone from Agartala. In between, there was no contact. On Saturday, when the counting of votes was about to begin, Sunil told me that the BJP would go beyond 40-mark in the 60 Member-Assembly. I took his prediction with a pinch of salt as in the last election the party had drawn blank. But, as the day grew and final results started pouring in, the BJP actually crossed 40 and the CPI-M that had ruled the state for more than a quarter of century was reduced to less than 20. Thus, the ‘Red Fort’ in the NorthEast had crumbled down. Along with many grassroot level RSS activists, the credit of the BJP victory goes to Sunil for his relentless efforts for years in this territory that was unknown to him some years ago.
The BJP had already won Assam two years ago. Now, it has also captured Tripura and Nagaland. It means, the ‘Hindi Heart-Land Hindu Party’ has spread its wings in the North-East and that too in majorly non-Hindu region. This is a sea change in the political history of the nation. The BJP president Amit Shah got a call from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat congratulating him on the “Sangh Parivaar” ideological victory in the North East over the Left. And with the BJP decimating the 25-yearold Left rule in Tripura, it has breached the final frontier of those who called it a party of the Hindus confined to the Hindi heartland. With an empathetic win in Tripura, the BJP has gone to 42 per cent of the vote share from zero, and the Congress has been reduced to a paltry 2 per cent. The hunger for electoral victory that fires the BJP of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah remains in stark contrast to the opposition which, except for sporadic spurts, still seems utterly complacent in the face of defeat after defeat.
LEFT TO FACE OBLIVION
As far as the Left goes, it is now utterly irrelevant and likely to face oblivion soon, ruling a single state in Kerala which, a jubilant Shah said, was next on the agenda for conquest. It lost West Bengal to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinomool Congress, and now Tripura has gone out of their hands. Considering that Kerala keeps altering power every election, within two years, the Left would be left with no bastion. However, the ‘leaders’ will have to blame none other but themselves for this debacle. Like many other parties, the CPI-M has now become a Familyowned estate of Karats and Yechuri, those who don’t allow anyone else to enter the inner circle. The outgoing Manik Sircar, who ruled Tripura for 20 years with a clean image, is the chief victim of this caucus.
The new trend emerging in the North-East is significant in the context of 2019 Lok Sabha show
The BJP is miles ahead of the opposition in terms of resources, narrative and a dedicated cadre which provides boots on the ground. This is coupled with effortless headline management — the fleecing of the Punjab National Bank by Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi was immediately replaced with news of the arrest of Karti Chidambaram, son of former finance minister P Chidambaram. The Congress was left scrambling for a defence.
also. The eight states in this region account for 24 Lok Sabha seats which will prove extremely handy in 2019 as the BJP tally will invariably slip in its strongholds of north and central India, where it has reached saturation. The BJP can, now, also claim that it has ideologically vanquished the Left and this victory came after years of ground work by the faithful RSS cadres. Ironically, the BJP has had to be flexible about ideology in the North East, but Shah and Modi are completely pragmatic. Electoral victory is all and it is a zero sum game. The North East wanted a change and opted to give the BJP a chance. The Congress, which barely fought the elections, was not even a remote contender. It is inexcusable for any party to take such a lackadaisical approach to the elections, and the voters sensing this punished the party. The Congress that had ruled the entire North-East for ages, drew blank in Tripura and in Nagaland. The absence of any opposition from the Congress in these two states, forced the straight fights and this scenario went in favour of the BJP. The contest was between the Left and the Right winger BJP. The electorate chose Right as they had experienced the Left for years.
BJP’S MAGIC WANE
Amit Shah has conjured up an entirely new constituency — a Herculean achievement, as the BJP’s magic wanes in the heartland. The BJP is miles ahead of the opposition in terms of resources, narrative and a dedicated cadre which provides boots on the ground. This is coupled with effortless headline management — the fleecing of the Punjab National Bank by Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi was immediately replaced with news of the arrest of Karti Chidambaram, son of former finance minister P Chidambaram. The Congress was left scrambling for a defence. And the BJP was back to owning the anti-corruption agenda with a little help from the CBI.
If the Modi-Shah duo continue to think and work like ‘Election Machine’, surely some more scandals involving top Congress leaders would reach the surface and would hit media headlines in the next few months. This situation would force the Congress and other Opposition parties to play on ‘back-foot’, making way for the BJP to repeat the 2014-show.