Muslims constitute 8.6% of the total population in Tripura, making it the largest religious minority group in the state. They are primarily Bengali speaking and have low participation in Government jobs (3.41%) indicating backwardness of the community.
Muslim representation in the politics is also relatively low. While tribal region has negligible minority population, there are at least six assembly seats where Muslim votes can be a determining factor.
The three Muslim MLAs in the current assembly, all from CPM, come from Boxanagar, Kailashahar and Kadamtala Kurti. In fact, of all the 10 seats in Tripura with more than 12% Muslim vote share, 9 were won by CPM in 2018 except Radhakishorepur, which went to BJP after the sitting MLA from Congress, popular local leader Pranajit Singha Roy switched party.
Across Tripura, we see a similar pattern where Congress vote has shifted to the BJP. However, left were still able to retain its Muslim vote share to a certain extent. There is a direct correlation between the Muslim population share and the Left’s performance. This has been the pattern for a long time in these assembly seats. However, that changed in 2019.
In the seats with sizable Muslim population, we see Congress improving its vote share significantly. While BJP too gained more vote share, it is the performance of the Congress that is interesting. Based on our booth level analysis, we can make a safe assumption that left voters have ditched their candidate and voted for congress.
As we write this, the newly formed alliance between Congress and the Left are yet to announce the seat adjustment structure and candidate list. A similar alliance was formed in West Bengal for 2016 election. While the left was able to transfer a certain part of its vote, the same thing cannot be said about Congress voters. We would get to know about the Tripura experiment on March 2.
Reference:
MUSLIM MINORITIES IN ELECTORAL POLITICS OF TRIPURA: Sumon Ali, Alak Bhattacharya
Census 2011
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