Progress from 2010 to 2015 :: Congress : Down from six
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 15 2015 -

The difference a five year period can spawn.

Perhaps nowhere is this more clear for the Congress in the recently announced election results to the Autonomous District Council.

Not exactly a curtain raiser to the Assembly election scheduled to be held sometime in 2017, but it is significant to note that the Congress has been unseated in at least four of the six District Councils.

So from helming the affairs in the six ADCs in the last election held in 2010, the Congress has managed to keep only Sadar Hills, where it secured absolute majority with 17 in the 24 ADC seats.

It may manage to lead the ADC at Chandel, winning 11 seats with the Naga People’s Front (NPF) coming a distant second with five.

Not exactly a wash out but it is significant that the Congress this time managed to bag only 46 seats from the 106 seats it managed in 2010.

If the Congress saw its fortune plummeting at the hustings this time, then it may be said that the NPF has managed to make a grand entry in the ADC, coming a credible second with 43 seats.

Topping this is the fact that the NPF has managed to wrest Ukhrul ADC from the Congress.

Moreover it is placed comfortably at Senapati too winning 11 seats and may form the ADC with the support of the BJP which has eight seats or the Independents.

The BJP on the other hand did not do too badly either winning 21 seats.

This is all that more remarkable given the fact that the party does not have a single MLA in the House of 60.

Moreover the BJP is a party largely seen as a Hindu centric political entity, earning a degree of dubiousness with one of the Ministers recently adopting an extreme stand against beef eating.

Now beef is a staple diet amongst the hill people of Manipur and this was bound to have had some impact on the manner in which people voted in the ADC election.

This is about statistics but then election equations are based on statistics.

And talking about statistics, it is interesting to see that Independent candidates taken together did better than the BJP, bagging 34 seats altogether.

Moreover the figures convincingly say that Independent candidates are well placed to float a front and form the ADC at Churachandpur winning 18 seats while the Congress came a poor second with just 5 followed by the BJP with one.

It is also interesting to note that while the NPF did extremely well in the Naga dominated districts of Ukhrul, Tamenglong and Senapati, it drew a blank in Churachandpur and managed only two in Sadar Hills.

A telling commentary that the NPF has not managed to break out from its Naga centric approach.

The result has been declared and while all political parties must be working over time to see how it can be at the helm of affairs in each of the six ADCs, it is interesting to note the big difference between the election of 2015 and the one held in 2010.

With no one openly boycotting the election this time, it was a welcome change to see all political parties plunging into the campaigning.

This also means that the elected ADC members will this time function from their home constituencies and not from Imphal as was the case last time.

Giving more teeth to the understanding of taking democracy to the grassroot level.