Election Commission of IndiaNAME OF THE NEWSPAPER THE HINDU "DATE:

Eastern•promises

n politics, it is not change that often comes as asurprise, but continuity. Tripura delivered a fifthstraight win for the Left Front led by the Com-munist Party of India (Marxist), with voters

. clearly reposing their faith in the course of peace anddevelopment set by Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. In anera when the term anti-incumbency is used to explainaway any and. all electoral defeats, the winning se-quence of the Left Front might seem an exception. Butthen, people do not throw out a government on accountof fatigue or boredom, but because of dissatisfactionwith the governance. Mr. Sarkar, and before him Das-arath Deb, gave the people of Tripura clean, corrup-tion-free governance with a twin-focus on conciliationand progress. The massive victory, with five-sixths ofthe seats in the 60-member Assembly, underscores thepositive mandate for the Left. The Congress and its allyamong the tribal population, the Indigenous National-ist Party of Twipra, put up a united fight, but the peopleevidently were not looking for an alternative. United ordivided, the opposition did not matter. A government'sperformance always trumps the opposition's promise.In sharp contrast to the situation in Tripura, the Trina-mool Congress (TMC) seems to have squandered muchof the goodwill with which it came to power in WestBengal less than two years ago. In the three Assemblyby-elections, the TMC won only one, but more impor-tantly, it came third in the two seats it lost. The Con-gress, which had Won all the three seats in the 2011general election in alliance with the TMC, won oneseat, and the Left Front the third. Clearly the signs areominous: without the Congress as an ally, and ..at thehead of a lacklustre administration, the Trinamool willnot fare well. .

Like Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya also voted forthe incumbents. The Naga People's Front won a thirdsuccessive term, this time with a huge majority. TheCongress, which won 22 seats in 2008, managed onlyeight now. Starved of power, the Congress appears tohave weakened considerably. The secretive approachof the United Progressive Alliance government-at theCentre to the Naga talks might also have had a negativeimpact on the fortunes of the Congress; quite evidently,the State unit of the Congress could not politicallyleverage the situation. In Meghalaya, the' Congressoutperformed itself while still falling short of a simple

. majority. Unlike five years ago, when its Big Brotherattitude united the entire opposition against it, theCongress will be hoping to provide a stable govern-ment. The abode. of the clouds is the only silver liningfor the Congress, but it is no more than a lining.

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka'Road, New Delhi - 110001

Election Commission of India {oNAME OF THE NEWSPAPER THE ASIAN AGE.

; Incumbents do wellThe CPI(M)-led Left Front in Tripura, the Congress in Meghalaya

and the Naga People's Front in Nagaland have exceeded their ownexpectations in recapturing their espective state Assemblies in

the recent polls for which results were announced on Thursday. But the 0

results also show that the Congress as a national party fell far short of itsobjective in Tripura and Nagaland, although it performed with style inMeghalaya, taking handsome winnings even in the Garo Hills area, thepocket borough ofPurno A_ Sangma, former Lok Sabha Speaker who hadcontested in last summer's presidential election,

In Tripura, the fifth-in-a-row victory of the Left under chief ministerManik Sarkar is striking as welL The small border state is not subject toan~ of the vagaries of small states, which are given to rampant corrup-tion, a strong defection syndrome, and (in the Northeast) arms flows andInsurgencies. Mr Sarkar's exemplary leadership has shown the way, andalso kept the Congress at bay.

In Nagaland, the regional party has come back for the third consecu-tive time, suggesting that it remains close to popular sentiment, and theCongress has fared much worse than in 2008as it picked the wrong can-didates, the party's woe almost everywhere.

In Assembly byelections in various states, the ruling parties have donevery well, with the exception of West Bengal. The Trinamul Congresscould pick up only one of three seats, while the Congress and the LeftFront bagged one each. These are signs of disquiet for Mamata

. Banerjee's party.

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi - 110001

-.NAME Of THE NEWSPAPER THE INDIAN EXPRESS DATE:

• SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAP

How Left govt gotit right in Tripura

(

I .

NOBODY HAD ANY doubt that the Left Front would have no prob-lem retaining power in Tripura. There were however questionsabout how 1.74 lakh state government employees and 5.68 lakh un-employed persons would behave on polling day. While 'Iripura'sstate government employees are the only such staff in the entirecountry to be denied pay scale at parwith central government employ-ees, very few opportunities have been created to ease the state'sburgeoning unemployment problem either. The Congress couldbe pardoned for thinking it would win their hearts.. Thursday's results, however, belied their hopes, with their votes

among others expected to have had a role in the Left Front's thump-ingvictory.

What is also noteworthy is that people from the backward classes- the Scheduled Tribes and Sched-uled Castes - also extended the LFoverwhelming support, in the light ofinsurgency fading away in the hilly areasthey live in over the past five or sixyears. Chief Minister Manik Sarkar'scontinuous chanting of the "peace,harmony and development" mantra -v ,

appears to have paid dividends, withthe state not only rninirnising ethnic

tension but also taking development and welfare schemes almost tothe doorstep of people.

As already reported by this paper, Prime Minister ManmohanSingh is on record praising Tripura as one of the best-governedstates in the country. The service delivery mechanism here is said tobe one of the finest, with very few complaints regarding PDS items,healthcare and education not reaching the grassroots population.

A month prior to the elections the government brought out abooklet in three languages showcasing as many as 24 national awardsthat Thpura has won in the past five years. These covered a widerange of areas, from recording the highest literacy increase during2001-2011 and the best performance in MNREGA implementa-tion, to highest foodgrain production, implementation of e-pan-chayat mission, highest coverage rate in the UID Aadhaar project aswell as in production of fish and coconut.

As Sarkar told this paper, the Left Front had not done anythipg ex- .traordinary. All it had done, he said, was fulfilled all its poll promises.

)

The Left Front had notdone anythingextraordinary. All ithad done, Sarkar said,was that it fulfilled allits poll promises

//Samudra is a special correspondent based in Guwahati

samudra.icashyap@expressindia.co

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