INDIA
Two more states go to polls as bjp eyes to change the political equations in northeast
Among the three states with Assembly elections in the region, the toughest fight for the BJP seems to be unfolding in Meghalaya, a state where all of the party’s 13 candidates lost their deposits in the 2013 Assembly elections.
This time around, however, the fight for the saffron party has been emboldened by two key factors — the Modi effect and the emergence of regional ally Nationalist People’s Party (NPP) in the last five years.
With 374 candidates in the fray slugging it out in 59 constituencies, the elections in Meghalaya is a deeply regional fight. Candidates matter over party symbols.
Yet, despite the dependence on the NPP, the BJP seems to be battling an anti-minority image in the Christian majority state. Apart from two visits to the state by PM Narendra Modi, the party also sent in its lone Christian face, Union Tourism Minister Alphons Kannanthanam to the state.
Kannanthanam, however, says that the party is confident of a win. “I think we have done a great campaign in the state; if one drives across Meghalaya, you will see that the party is all over. At this point of time, we are pretty confident,” he told DNA.
NPP, on the other hand, the BJP’s ally in Manipur, Rajasthan and Nagaland, is reeling with the effect of the saffron party’s alliance. Despite making deep inroads inside the state and a stellar growth in the last few years, the party has evidently distanced itself from the BJP’s ideologies.
In a recent interview to DNA, NPP’s Conrad Sangma said that elections and ideologies are different matters altogether. “If we ally with the BJP does not mean we believe in their ideologies by compromising our own,” he had said.
While the parties have not announced a pre-poll alliance, Kannanthanam told dna that they will “cross the bridge when we get there”.
For the Congress, the fight is mostly on anti-incumbency and on issues like the NGT ban on rat-hole coal mining. The death of the Williamnagar candidate of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Jonathone Sangma, in an IED blast by the Garo National Liberation Army (GLNA), has also pointed at the existing problem of militancy.
Speaking to DNA, Meghalaya CM Mukul Sangma said that when the Congress took over, the state was coping with a militancy problem.
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