Yesterday, Viplav Dev sworn-in as Tripura Chief minister as BJP got clean majority in the state. Many analysts termed it landslide victory and BJP hailed it historical feat as they could destroy communist bastion this time. However, one can see some interesting observations if we go through the statistics of election results.

Tripura has total 60 seats. Whichever party wins 31 seats will form the government. BJP got 35 seats, ruling CPM got only 16 seats. Other regional party got 8 seats and 1 seat is still vacant. So BJP formed the government. However, number of votes received by various parties are as below:

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – 999,093 votes (43%)
Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) – 992,575 votes (42.7%)

This means, out of total 2,279,875 votes, BJP got just 6518 votes more than the CPM party. That is 0.3% more than the runner-up party. Of course, electioneering is a complex subject and number of votes and the translated number of seats never have a linear relationship. But still, somebody calling its complete destruction of communist bastion is not correct. It is also to be remembered, the 9th largest party All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) got 6989 votes with 0.3% vote percentage. Congress stood at 4th place with 1.8%. So any simple combination of alliances could have done sufficient damage to BJP. All in all, BJP was successful in making sure such alliances did not happen.

-Zuran