Eyeing 22 out of 25 in North East : Gaining more confidence
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: March 15 2019 -

The BJP is certainly in an aggressive mode and this is what has added more colour and interest in the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Target is 22 LS seats in the North East, which has 25 seats altogether.

This is where the role of NEDA will gain prominence and look at the manner in which the saffron party has gone from strength to strength.

It is also significant to note that whatever bad blood may have been created when the CAB was in the limelight seems to have been dealt with satisfactorily, with the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) having buried the hatchet and agreeing to come back into the Assam Government and strike a pre-poll deal with the BJP.

It is the same with the NPP in Meghalaya and clearly the BJP is a party which has understood what coalition politics is all about.

Successfully reaching out to political parties from which it can draw its strength and even in Manipur, it will not be surprising if it manages to strike up deals with the NPP, NPF and other like minded political parties.

This is where the failure of the Congress and the Left parties, particularly the CPI, to strike a deal in Manipur may just about pave the way for the BJP to inch closer to its Congress Mukt agenda.

Early days yet, but the aggressive stand adopted by the BJP cannot miss the eye of the keen political observers and it was with a reason why BJP general secretary and in charge of North East Ram Madhav sounded the call for 22 Lok Sabha seats in the North East region after a meeting with all BJP Chief Ministers of the North Eastern States at Guwahati on March 13.

Tough to say how the Congress must be reading the poll strategies of the BJP, but it certainly cannot afford to take the matter lightly.

How well placed is the Congress in Assam, which gets to send the largest number of MPs in the North East with 14.

Moreover how well placed is the BJP in the other States of the region ?

Will it be in a position to sweep the two seats in Manipur ?

This is a question which Chief Minister N Biren and State BJP president K Bhabananda must have dwelt upon a long time back.

As noted here in earlier commentaries, the outcome of the elections will be much more crucial for Chief Minister N Biren than to CLP leader O Ibobi for the past is more than enough to illustrate that it is the party in power at Imphal that manage to send its MP particularly from the Inner Parliamentary Constituency.

The case of T Meinya, who has been representing the Inner seat for the last 15 years as a Congress MP is a case in point.

And this is a point which would not have missed the eyes of the Central leadership of the BJP.

In an election which is believed to be much closer than the 2014 Parliamentary election, each seat will count and no party can afford to overlook one single Constituency.

With its eyes set on 22 out of 25, the BJP has laid down a target.

What happens eventually is something which will be known only after the poll results start trickling in but the confidence of the BJP in the North East is significant and this says something a lot about its progress in the last three/four years in the region.