Run up to the by election in 2 ACs : Congress versus BJP
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 20 2015 -
By election. This is what ties up Thangmeiband Assembly Constituency and Thongju Assembly Constituency.
All courtesy the disqualification order issued against the two representatives by the Assembly Secretariat or more specifically the Assembly Speaker.
Congress and BJP.
Other than the fact that these two Constituencies will be going for a mid-term poll, what is also clear is that it is going to be some sort of a show down between the Congress and the BJP.
One ruling the State and the other ruling Delhi and by extension heading the Government of India.
Already the two parties have set the ball rolling for the election campaign in these two Constituencies and while the date for the by election is yet to be officially announced, it could come any time.
This is what is going to make the by election in the two Assembly Constituencies all that more interesting.
Interesting it is to see that the BJP, which does not have a single MLA in the House of 60, today seems to be the only political party which can take the fight to the Congress, at least in the valley area which gets to send 40 out of the 60 MLAs in the Assembly.
A success story for the BJP but then again this also says something disturbing about the manner in which the other political parties have fallen into the depth.
The Manipur People’s Party is no longer even a shadow of its earlier self. The Left parties too have not been able to move out from its traditional strongholds.
A clear reflection that though India is a multi-party democracy, the other political parties have not been able to fire the imagination of the people here by any stretch of the imagination.
Lack of political leadership.
This much is evident in the manner in which any political party which holds power at Delhi has been able to make its presence felt here.
If it is the turn of the BJP now, rewind to the late 70s when the Janata Party grabbed the limelight, after the Morarji Desai Government took centre stage at Delhi.
It was more or less the same thing, when VP Singh became the Prime Minister leading a third front party at New Delhi in the latter part of the 80s.
The same thing happened again when the BJP first came to power in the latter part of the last century under Atal Behari Vajpayee.
One just has to recall how the then Radhabinod Koijam Government was pulled down with the State BJP leading the way here.
After the BJP led NDA Government fell at the Centre after the 2002 general election at New Delhi, the Congress came roaring back to power here in 2004.
That the feat was repeated in 2009 and again in 2012 may be attributed to the fine run the Congress had at Delhi.
This more than shows that the State political leadership has never been able to emerge from the shadow of the Centre and in many ways the manner in which the BJP has come to occupy centre stage may be attributed to the excellent showing of the party in the 2014 Parliamentary election.
What happens in Delhi has mostly dictated the political terms here and this is what Manipur is witnessing in the run up to the by election to the two Assembly Constituencies now.
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