Abhishek Jha and Roshan Kishore
The three north-eastern states of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura have re-elected their incumbent governments in the results announced on March 2. While these three states only account for five Lok Sabha seats between them, are there any macro political takeaways from the latest results? Here are three that stand out.
BJP has retained its dominance but its hopes of expansion will have to wait
Of the three states which went to polls the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies were in power in Tripura and Nagaland. It is going to retain power in these two states. In Meghalaya, although the National People’s Party (NPP) is a part of the BJP’s broad-based grouping, the North East Development Alliance (NEDA), the BJP and NPP fought the elections separately. Only the NPP has gained compared to its previous seat tally in Meghalaya. What do these elections mean for the BJP then? A one-line answer to this question is that it has retained its presence in these states but will have to wait to expand its footprint further. The BJP fought 116 assembly constituencies (ACs) out of the total 178 that went to polls in these three states when elections were held in 2018. It won 49 ACs back then. It has won 46 ACs this time. To be sure, the decline in BJP’s overall strike rate in this round is largely on account of Tripura.
The Congress continues to lose ground in the north-east
When the Congress lost power to the BJP in the 2014 general elections, it had MLAs in 47 of 180 ACs in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura. This number became 21 in the 2018 elections and has fallen further to just eight this time. To be sure, the Congress was reconciled to its shrinking footprint even before the results as it contested fewer ACs than it had in 2018 in these three states combined. This is largely because it entered into an alliance with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M)-led Left Front in Tripura, and contested 45 fewer seats than in 2018. Similarly, although the 23 ACs it has contested in Nagaland is five more than in 2018, this is less than half of all the seats on offer. It contested all 60 ACs from 1982 to 2008, and 56 ACs even in 2013. In Meghalaya, the Congress contested all ACs but has performed significantly worse than last time.
These results do not tell us anything about the efficacy of a united front tactics against the BJP
For a variety of reasons which are situated within the local socio-cultural fault lines of the north-eastern regions, political contradictions are very different compared to the rest of the country. This is bound to have a bearing on political alliances in these regions as well. With just about a year to go for the 2024 general elections, many opposition parties are trying to evolve a united front to take on the BJP. Do these results tell us anything about the efficacy of such a tactic? The short answer to this question is no. The political alliance which was closest to a mainstream opposition coalition against the BJP was the Left-Congress one in Tripura. However, the election results show that both the BJP and Left-Congress alliance have lost some of their support base to the Tripura Motha Party which fought the elections on the plank of championing the issues of Scheduled Tribe (ST) population, which has a much larger share in Tripura. It is unlikely that a political start-up such as the TMP will be a factor in the national elections.
