The Modi Magic
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: February 10, 2014 -

BJP Party's Prime Ministerial candidate and Gujarat CM Narendra Modi arrives at Imphal :: 08 Feb 2014 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

From the launching of its North East Mission as early as November 2013 to the kicking off its first election rally in the Northeast at Imphal and Guwahati on the same day, the seriousness of the efforts of BJP to put up a grand show in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in an otherwise long neglected region of the country is too obvious for anyone to miss.

Even the dismissal of the Congress party in the State on the possible impact of BJP in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election sound submissive rather than convincing.

However, the truth is that apart from the flickering moments of glory that BJP enjoyed and basked under during the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the 2003 elections, the saffron party has been not much of a force that comes into reckoning in the electoral psyche of the people in the Northeast who considered it as a ‘Hindi speaking Hindu agenda political party’.

But the North-eastern region, which has altogether 25 parliamentary seats and a staggering 2.5 lakh voters in its electoral list of Delhi alone (not to speak of Northeast voters living in other parts of the country), not an area that BJP could not afford to be left out from its mission of 2014 Lok Sabha election.

So, the question of whether or not, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi would be accepted and be able to revive the spell of magic that Vajpayee had casted over the people 10 years back was what remained predominantly in the minds of the political observers in the run up to his address at the election rallies of the party at Imphal and Guwahati on February 8.

Well, if the unprecedented turnout of people at the two election rallies at Imphal and Guwahati, which even surpassed the highest expectation of the party leaders, is of any indication to the test of acceptability of any BJP leader beyond the Hindi-heartland, then one can safely conclude that Modi definitely does have his own share of magical spell to cast on the people of Northeast.

However, unlike Vajpayee, who primarily banked on his clean image, politically and personally; the magic of Modi has stemmed mainly from his ability to grab the right issue at the right moment.

As in other parts of the country where he has shown his quick reflexes in grabbing every burning issue of the day to his advantage to take on the ruling party, Modi was in his usual best in raking up the issue of lack of development in Northeast region and the problem of racial discrimination that people from the Northeast are facing in other parts of the country.

Apart from his usual blame game of attacking the ruling party for lack of political vision for development of the region, Modi seemed to have struck the right chord when he said that the Northeast region should emerge as an IT hub and sports centre while at the same time denouncing the recent incident of killing Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, in Delhi as a National shame to a thundering applause.

However, the magic of Modi and his articulation stop-short when he remained silence on the hottest public demand for removal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 from the region, even though he mustered up courage upto saying, “here in this state (Manipur), security forces are mercilessly killing even pregnant women”.