BJP eyes 8/8 score in North-East States

Aiming to strike an eight-out-of-eight score in the north-eastern States, the BJP has already sounded the poll bugle for Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram, where elections are due next year.

On Tuesday, BJP president Amit Shah and his point man for the job, former Congress leader and present chairman of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), Himanta Biswa Sarma, rolled out the red carpet for a strategy session with the Chief Ministers of the five States that are already in the alliance kitty.

The CMs of Assam, Manipur, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland struck a pose with Sarma and Shah at the second conclave on NEDA in the Capital, with the BJP president asserting that the three-year-old BJP government at the Centre has done “several times more work” for the North-East than the Congress had in the last 65 years.

“The development done by the Modi government in the last three years for the long-neglected north-eastern region is several times more than the work done by Congress-led governments in the last 65 years,” Shah said.

Work had not finished but just started, he further said, adding that “all eight Chief Ministers from the alliance will participate in the next NEDA conclave”.

Polls are due in CPI(M)-ruled Tripura and Congress-ruled Meghalaya in February 2018, while Mizoram, also ruled by the Congress, goes to polls in November 2018.

Addressing reporters a day ahead of the NEDA conclave, Sarma said he is confident that within a year, “we would have a Congress- mukt North-East”. Sarma had left the Congress in alleged disgust over “dynasty politics” — with the then Assam CM Tarun Gogoi promoting his son Gaurav.

Sarma described NEDA as not just a political platform but also a socio-cultural one, where the collective interests of the north-eastern States are promoted.

He was equally careful in distancing from the BJP’s cow politics and its ideological affiliates’ crusades against beef-eating, a common practice in the region he hails from.

“Food habits and cultural practices are very private. We respect the cultural diversity of each region and the individual’s rights in all such matters,” he said.

The North-East States collectively account for only 25 Parliamentary seats. But it not only has a geopolitical significance for the ruling party, it is also one more area where the BJP resident, aided ably by Sarma, is determined to knock the Congress down. Till last year, the Congress was in power in five of the eight States, including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Manipur. But the equation has been reversed in just about a year, with the BJP and its smaller allies now ruling in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Sikkim.

In the Manipur Assembly elections this March, even though the Congress won 28 of the 60 seats and the BJP just 21, the latter formed the government, engineering defections from the Congress and the Trinamool Congress.

Sarma had led the show in Manipur, too. Now, with the Congress facing dissidence in Meghalaya, his task seems to be cut out. Even in CPI(M)-ruled Tripura, the BJP has made a breakthrough by getting six Trinamool Congress MLAs to defect. “We are securing eight out of eight States,” said Sarma, smiling confidently.