NE profile in the capital : Man from Garo Hills
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 01, 2012 -

With only 24 Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha, the seven States of the North East are indeed ‘under represented’ in the lower House of Parliament and same is the case in the Rajya Sabha, or the upper House.

Of the 24, the lion's share belong to Assam with 14 MPs while the rest, Manipur with 2, Meghalaya 2, Tripura 2, Arunachal Pradesh 2, Mizoram 1 and Nagaland 1, make up the rest.

Seven States and only 24 MPs and view this against the 80 MPs from Uttar Pradesh or 42 from Andhra Pradesh or West Bengal or 40 from Bihar and the term ‘under represented’ would sound mild.

Relatively smaller States like Gujarat with 26 MPs or Kerela with 20 MPs score much better than any of the North Eastern States and while population strength has been the basis for working out the number of representatives to Parliament or the State Assemblies, it has meant much more than this at the ground reality.

With just 24 MPs, the voice of the North East region has gone unheard and unacknowledged in the corridors of power for decades and put in the compulsions of party affiliation and the chances of the 24 MPs raising a collective voice remains something in the realm of a fantasy.

This is one reason why the North East region has failed to register in the consciousness of the so called mainland India and this becomes all that more acute and pinching in the face of the rising political clouts of the regional satraps of whom some have gone on to don the mantle of king makers or destroyers.

With the idea of one party rule becoming a dinosaur in the age of coalition Governments at the Centre, it is only natural that regional political powers begin to make their presence felt in the corridors of power at Delhi.

Remember Jayalalitha during the BJP led NDA Government ? Why does the Congress wear a creased and worried look every time Mamta Banerjee decides to flex her muscle ?

It is against this backdrop that Purno A Sangma, former Speaker in the Lok Sabha and veteran political leader from the Garo Hills of Meghalaya has pitched in for the post of President and this again is the reason why his move has generated so much interest in the North East region.

Apart from Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed of Assam, who occupied Rastrapathi Bhavan during the time of Indira Gandhi, no one else from the North East has come within sniffing distance of the highest office in the country. With Jayalalitha and Navin Patnaik batting on behalf of PA Sangma the interest that the man from Meghalaya has generated is significant.

It is not only a case of a man from the North East being in the reckoning for the post of President, but extends to the realm of the region's presence in the corridors of power and influence in the country's capital.

Whether Mr Sangma makes the cut or not is a different thing but the significance should not be lost and that is, the North East region continues to be abysmally ‘under represented’ in the political set up of the country.

For that matter how many from the North East have been appointed as Governors ? It is not that the region lacks personalities. Far from this, it has boiled down to the question of how many strings one can pull and how well placed one is to knock on the right door.

24 MPs representing seven States on the floor of the Lok Sabha and it becomes clear why the region has more often than not been perceived as nothing more than a frontier to guard India's interest in the east.