3 days fest to trump NE free Cong : Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 17 2018 -

Not exactly BJP Governments in all the States of North East India, but yes definitely it is a Congress free North East now with Mizoram falling to the Mizo National Front (MNF).

Again it is not the BJP which is heading the Government at Meghalaya but the NPP but undeniable that the BJP managed to outwit the Congress at a time when it was needed the most and its two MLAs are now in the NPP led Government at Shillong.

Same thing too at Nagaland where it a junior partner to Nephiu Rio’s Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) with 12 MLAs in a House of 60.

So Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Tripura are today under the BJP while it is a key partner in Meghalaya and Nagaland.

Obvious that the saffron party should have every reason to be happy and satisfied with its rise in the North East and making things more rosy for the BJP would be the fact that in Manipur and Assam it is the Congress which lost out to the BJP while in Meghalaya the Congress lost to an ally of the BJP.

In Tripura, it was bringing an end to the four term rule of the Left.

Despite the setbacks it suffered at Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh recently, the sun seems to be shining on the Lotus in the North East States and it is in cognizance of this that the State unit of the BJP is planning to celebrate a Congress free North East for three days anytime soon.

The three days festival will be a perfect fit, if the BJP can win the two Lok Sabha seats in the State, when the country goes for Parliamentary polls in the early part of next year.

So three days celebration and this definitely should fall in line with the campaigning ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

At the moment, the two Lok Sabha seats in Manipur are under the Congress and with the BJP heading the Government at Imphal, this is the best time to send two more MPs from Manipur to the Lok Sabha.

As pointed out earlier in this column, this is where the Lok Sabha elections will become more crucial for the BJP than for the Congress.

As the party heading the Government at Imphal the top leadership of the BJP will obviously expect the State unit of the party to do better this time and this is where Chief Minister N Biren and his deputies will need to step out with their best foot.

The Congress, experienced in electoral politics, will obviously go all the way out to blunt the onslaught of the BJP and this is where the Lok Sabha elections will get more interesting.

This is the first time that the Congress will be fighting the Lok Sabha elections sitting on the Opposition bench after the 2002 Assembly elections and it remains to be seen how it manages to pick holes in the armoury of the BJP and its allies.

And to be sure the issues in the Inner Parliamentary seat and Outer Parliamentary seat will be vastly different and some of the issues will obviously run counter to each other.

So while the interests of Manipur will be pitch forked in the Inner seat, one can expect the ongoing political negotiations between the Centre and the NSCN (IM) to hog the limelight, especially in the Naga dominated hill districts.

Much will also depend on how voters from the seven Assembly segments of the valley area, but which fall in the Outer Constituency, decide to vote.

Interesting days are ahead and made more interesting with the three days celebration lined up by the State BJP to trump a North East free Congress.