3 northeast states go to polls in Feb, results Mar 3

With 60member assembly each, national parties to slug it out

NEWDELHI/GUWAHATI: The election season of 2018, a year that will see eight assembly elections, will start on February 18 with Tripura, one of the two states with a communist government in India (Kerala is the other). Meghalaya and Nagaland, two other North Eastern states will go the polls on February 27. The results will be announced on March 3.

With a 60-member assembly each, these three states may not be geographically big but the elections are significant for national parties for varying reasons.

For the BJP, which governs directly or along with its allies, 19 states the polls are an opportunity to add more states and further reinforce its position in the Northeast, where it has dislodged the Indian National Congress as the dominant political force.

For the Congress, coming off the high of the Gujarat election, where, despite losing, it made significant gains, the elections are an opportunity to stay relevant.

Meghalaya is one of the five states it governs (the others are Karnataka, Mizoram, Punjab, and Puducherry). For the CPI(M) too, the elections are an opportunity to stay relevant.

The BJP’s North-east policy took off in 2016 when it ended the Congress’s 15-year rule in Assam to form a government in coalition with two regional parties. The party then won Arunachal Pradesh from the Congress and formed a coalition government in Manipur.

In Christian-majority Meghalaya and Nagaland, the BJP’s main plank is development while the Congress has sought to polarise the debate, citing incidents of cow vigilantism and attacks on Christian institutions in different parts of the country.

The BJP has launched an aggressive campaign strategy in the state even though the main challenge to the ruling party is expected to come from the Nationalist People’s Party (NPP) of Conrad Sangma, son of former Lok Sabha speaker PA Sangma. Although the NPP is a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP is likely to go alone in the state.

In Tripura, ruled by the Left since 1993, the BJP has emerged as the main opposition party, replacing the Congress. The grand old party might be the BJP’s main political adversary, but the BJP treats the Left as its main ideological opponent. Although the BJP does not have a local face to match the popularity of four-term chief minister Manik Sarkar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal in this Left bastion is unmistakable. The saffron party hopes to ride on Modi’s popularity to unseat the Left government.

In Nagaland, the ruling National People’s Front (NPF) is a divided house, with party chief S Liezietsu ranged against chief minister TR Zeliang. Lok Sabha MP Neiphiu Rio quit the NPF on Wednesday to join the National Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP). The BJP is likely to ally with the NDPP and also hopes to reach an understanding with Zeliang faction of the NPF. A senior BJP functionary claimed that all factions of the NPF were inclined to tie up with the BJP and a call on this would be taken shortly. “We have decided to contest without any pre-poll alliance,” NPF national secretary Nihim D Shira said.

On Thursday, at a press conference in New Delhi, chief election commissioner AK Joti, whose term ends on Monday, said the elections in all these states will be conducted by using electronic voting machines (EVMs) along with voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) . The EVM votes will be matched with the results of the VVPAT machines in one polling booth in each of the 60 constituencies in each of the three states.

Elections in these three states will be the first after the Union finance ministry notified the terms of electoral bonds for political funding, which is a step in the right direction, according to Joti.

FOR THE CONGRESS, COMING OFF THE HIGH OF THE GUJARAT ELECTION, WHERE, DESPITE LOSING, IT MADE SIGNIFICANT GAINS, THE ELECTIONS ARE AN OPPORTUNITY TO STAY RELEVANT