Rio had uprooted BJP from Nagaland in 2008: NPF
Source: NPF Press Bureau *

Kohima, February 24 2018: In recent times, the BJP in Nagaland has been targeted by almost all sections of the society including the Churches, political parties and various personalities on social media.

And facing the proverbial firing squad on the eve of elections 2018, the BJP is now disconsolate and has started to use churlish, unsavoury phrases and metaphors unbecoming of a national political party.

In the fifteen years of alliance with the BJP, the Naga People's Front has managed to contain the growth of its partner in Nagaland not unlike a botanist nurturing and controlling the growth of a bonsai plant.

In 2003, the BJP won 7 seats, in 2008 the number dwindled to 2 which was further reduced to 1 in 2013 .

Parting of ways with the BJP has been seen by many party leaders as the best thing to have happened to the NPF.

And now that the NDPP, in its attempt to snatch power by hook or by crook has opened the floodgates by offering 20 seats to the BJP, a culture foreign to the Naga society is threatening to inundate the Nagas' way of life.

It is now the bounden duty of the NPF to protect the identity, traditions and culture of the Nagas, and it is our solemn promise to the Naga people that we shall do our best to safeguard our traditional ways of life.

One need not be a soothsayer to understand that the alliance of the NDPP and the BJP would be very brief since after the elections Neiphiu Rio, presently the apple of BJP's eye, would like to merge the BJP members, if any, with his party as is his wont.

It is just possible the BJP leaders are suffering a bout of collective amnesia, or else they should remember that in 2004, Rio got the BJP legislators to merge with the NPF.

He repeated the same formula in 2008 too, just that this time round, in his euphoria, he couldn't help but shoot off a letter to the leader of UPA Mrs Sonia Gandhi boasting that he, Rio, had "successfully uprooted BJP from Nagaland." And the rest is history: Rio's 2008 letter landed in the hands of BJP leaders and though he was hopeful of a Union ministerial berth in 2014, his political aspirations failed to bloom.

And BJP, once uprooted from Nagaland, shall surely now find it hard to take roots in Nagaland again.

* The sender of this news can be contacted at npfpressbureau(AT)rediffmail(DOT)com .

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