By Sujit Chakraborty
Guwahati/Shillong/Aizawl, Nov 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA)swept all the ten Assembly seats in four northeastern states - Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland - where bypolls were held last month.
The results, announced on Tuesday, would not only lead to NDA constituents increase their strengths in the respective Assemblies but also, according to political pundits, would influence the upcoming Assembly polls in Manipur (2022), and Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, and Mizoram (in 2023).
Increasing their vote share compared to the March-April assembly election, the Bharatiya Janata Party won the Bhabanipur, Thowra and Mariani Assembly seats while its partner United People's Party Liberal (UPPL) succeeded in the Gossaigaon and Tamulpur seats with a record margin of votes.
The NDA allies -- National People's Party (NPP) led by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma, and United Democratic Party (UDP) won all three seats in Meghalaya, and the Mizo National Front (MNF), of Chief Minister Zoramthanga, and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), headed by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, won one seat each in Mizoram and Nagaland, respectively.
The NDPP candidate, however, was elected unopposed in the Shamator-Chessore seat.
Besides Assam, the BJP heads the governments in Tripura, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.
After the declaration of the bypoll results on Tuesday, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma credited the election success to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"Due to the Prime Minister's all-out mission for the multifaceted development of northeastern states, people giving their whole hearted support to the NDA allies. With our success in all the states, BJP and NDA's responsibility further widened," observed Sarma, who is also the convener of the BJP-led anti-Congress alliance of regional parties -- North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA).
The Congress, which had governed these states for many decades, scored zero.
State Assam chief Bhupen Kumar Borah, however, said that this election has greatly strengthened the party's base in the five constituencies and this would prove to be invaluable to the party in the future.
"Naturally, as a political party, we would have been delighted to win the election but we are not dejected simply because we lost. The general public thinks that being on the side of the ruling party would lead to the development of their area and this is only natural," he said.
Criticising the BJP government, Borah claimed that a total of 3,243 people in the state committed suicide between now and 2019, due to the situation caused by Covid pandemic, and asked if this was an example of the "people- oriented" development of the BJP government?"
In the 126-member Assam Assembly, the BJP had won 60 seats in the elections earlier this year, which was similar to the number it won five years ago, but after the bypoll results, its strength increased to 62, and of the ruling alliance to 78, with UPPL's seven members and Asom Gana Parishad's nine MLAs.
While BJP fought the byelections with its two allies - UPPL and AGP, the Congress, which led a 10-party 'Mahajot' (grand alliance) in the March-April Assembly polls and bagged 29 seats, fought the bypolls almost alone.
Two former 'Mahajot' allies - Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) and Hagrama Mahilary-led Bodoland People's Front (BPF) - had fielded separate candidates in at least three seats dividing the non-BJP vote.
The Congress tried to forge an alliance with the influential peasant leader and rights activist Akhil Gogoi led Raijor Dal but due to seat sharing disputes, the alliance could not materialise.
Political commentator and writer Sushanta Talukdar said : "Both BJP and the Congress have high stakes in Assam and the outcome of the bypolls are likely to influence the upcoming Assembly polls in the neighbouring states."
"The Congress might be trying to consolidate its position in the northeast on its own but reality shows that it has to take the support of the other non-BJP parties, specially the local parties," Talukdar, the editor of multilingual online portal 'nezine', told IANS.
(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)
Source: IANS
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