POLITICS

INDIA disunity, TIPRA’s mixed signals — how BJP won 88% vote in Tripura’s Muslim-dominated Boxanagar

INDIA disunity, TIPRA’s mixed signals — how BJP won 88% vote in Tripura’s Muslim-dominated Boxanagar

Tripura Congress didn't field candidate in Boxanagar & its 2-time MLA defected to BJP in run up to 5 September bypoll. TIPRA chief said CPI(M)'s campaign left much to be desired.

A Muslim candidate fielded by the BJP registered a massive victory in Tripura’s minority-dominated Boxanagar assembly constituency Friday, prompting the CPI(M), which won the seat merely six months ago, to allege that it was an outcome of widespread rigging and intimidation of voters.

The BJP, while denying the allegations, said its electoral performance in Boxanagar and Dhanpur heralded the beginning of a new era in the state’s politics where appeasement will have no takers, signalling that even the Muslim community had reposed its faith in the party’s credo of sabka saath, sabka vikas”.

According to the 2011 census, Muslims make up more than 50 percent of the population of Boxanagar.

“The politics of appeasement that went on for years ended today. This divide and rule policy and appeasement to reduce a community to a voting bloc will not work anymore. The minority community has blessed us with their support, responding to the slogan of sabka saath sabka vikas,” Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha said at a press conference Friday.

While the BJP retained Dhanpur, it wrested Boxanagar from the CPI(M), registering a dramatic rise in vote share in the seat — from 37.76 percent in the February 2023 assembly polls to 87.97 percent in the 5 September bypoll.

The CPI(M), on the other hand, maintained that the bypoll results did not reflect the sentiments of the people.

“The result vindicates our position that rigging was widespread. Merely six months ago, our candidate won Boxanagar by nearly 5,000 votes. And this time our candidate could poll only 3,000 votes. This is clearly not a reflection of the choice of the electorate. The BJP has turned Tripura into a laboratory of autocratic policies,” CPI(M) state secretary Jitendra Chaudhury told reporters Friday.

The Boxanagar result is also significant given that in Tripura, the Congress — part of the 28-member INDIA alliance — did not field any candidate to help prevent a possible split in the non-BJP vote. This is a strategy the Opposition plans to replicate elsewhere to bolster its chances against the BJP in the 2024 general elections. The Boxanagar result, however, exposed the limitations of the INDIA alliance in effectively taking on the BJP in the absence of seamless coordination among workers and leaders of the constituent parties. 

The Boxanagar by-election was necessitated by the death of Samsul Haque, the sitting CPI(M) MLA. Haque’s son Mizan Hossain contested the bypoll on a CPI(M) ticket and was trounced by Tafajjal Hossain of the BJP.