Northeast polls: What past trends tell us about polls in Tripura, Meghalaya & Nagaland

Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura are the first among the nine states going to polls this year. BJP has attempted to consolidate its hold in the Northeast through its Northeast Democratic Alliance, which was formed in 2016 to bring regional parties under its umbrella. Ananay Agarwal, research lead at Ashoka University’s Trivedi Centre for Political Data, looks at historical polling trends in the three states that are set to get new governments on March 2.



Why it could be a tight contest in Tripura

In a political shift for Tripura, for long a Left bastion, the 2018 assembly polls saw the BIP-led NDA win a comfortable majority, bagging 44 of the 60 seats. BJP won 35 seats on its own, ending CPM-led Left Front's 25-year hold on government. Congress, the main opposition party in the state since the 1970s, failed to win a single seat. ‘This time, CPM and Congress have formed a pre-poll alliance to counter BJP, which has retained the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) as its regional partner.


The NDAs likely to face stiff competition from new entrant Tipra Motha, led by erstwhile Tripura royal Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma, who enjoys considerable support among indigenous Tiprasa people.

Debbarma formed the party after leaving Congress in 2019 and went on to win 18 of the 28 seats in the 2021 Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections, ousting CPM that had held the reins for 15 years. Its call for the creation of a “Greater Tipraland” state has resonated with indigenous communities and political parties alike.

But Tripura has generally been a happy hunting ground for incumbent candidates - a positive sign for the NDA. Since 1983, at least 45 of 60 previous winners have contested in every ensuing election cycle. Only 20 incumbents were re-elected in the 2018 election - the Towest tally for sitting MLAS since 1977 - but this actually represented a shift in the state's politics in BIP's favour.

Four-cornered fight In Meghalaya
Though Congress emerged as the single largest party with 21 of 60 seats in the 2018 polls, the National People’s Party (NPP), which won 20 seats, formed the government after forging post-poll alliances with regional parties and the BJP, denying Congress its near-continuous hold over the state that was formed in 1972.

The 2008 polls, too, had resulted in a hung assembly despite Congress winning the most seats. But the ensuing non-Congress coalition government only lasted a year before Congress returned to office. The current NPP-led coalition government, however, has comfortably completed its term. Led by CM Conrad Sangma, NPP has gone from strength to strength, becoming the first northeastern party to achieve the status of a ‘national party’, having expanded to neighbouring states and currently holding 4 seats in Arunachal Pradesh and 7 in Manipur.

With no overt pre-poll alliances in place and four major parties — NPP, BJP, Congress and Trinamool — contesting in nearly every seat, the competition is stiff.

Tough time for NPF In Nagaland
In 2018, the Naga People’s Front (NPF) emerged as the largest party, winning 26 out of 60 seats, but failed to form the government. Its pre-poll alliance with BJP collapsed before the election and the saffron party, with its 12 seats, instead turned to the newly formed Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), which had won 18 seats, to form the government. Congress, despite having won several outright majorities in the past, has seen its seat share continuously decline and, in 2018, it failed to win a single seat.

Though NPF has enjoyed several years of dominance since 2003, it is only contesting 22 seats with more than 20 MLAs having quit the party to join NDPP, led by three-time CM Neiphiu Rio. NDPP has renewed its alliance with
BJP this year with a 40-20 seat split in favour of the regional party.

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