Membership drive launched with a purpose: Sharing the same stage
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 08 2019 -

The Government may be facing internal dissent with the infighting known to all, but the BJP seems set to look forward, beyond the immediate and the massive membership drive launched on July 6 bears testimony to this.

This cannot be good news for the Congress, for after all here is a party which has just whipped the oldest political party in the recently conducted Lok Sabha elections and remember this is the first BJP led Government in Manipur.

Looking to 2022, this is what seems to be the driving force in the membership drive launched by the saffron party and it is set to go on till August 30.

So for more than a month one can expect the saffron party leaving nothing to chance to enrol as many members as possible and it will be interesting to see how much it can add to its already existing strength of 4.4 lakh primary members after August 30, 2019.

How effective would it be in the hill districts is another interesting question that comes to mind.

Will the BJP be able to neutralise the NPF hold in the Naga dominated hill districts of Manipur or will it be content to play second fiddle to the NPF in the hills ?

Allies no doubt at the moment, but such is politics that one cannot say for sure what the future would hold and this is a point which must have registered in the consciousness of BJP president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

It is also interesting to see a former leader of a prominent civil society organisation jumping onto the BJP band wagon and it remains to be seen how well this would have gone down with the public. All interesting developments.

Perhaps the most interesting was to see Chief Minister N Biren and IPR Minister Th Biswajit on the same stage during the membership drive of the BJP.

Underlining the point that the party is different from the Government or was it a show of camaderie in front of the public or the Central leadership of the BJP ?

Tough to say but it was nonetheless interesting to see the two coming together even as there is nothing much to show that the crisis in the BJP led Government has been resolved or will be resolved soon.

The membership drive will no doubt be keenly watched by the Congress and the other political parties and once the drive is over, one can expect the State BJP to tom tom how many have enrolled as members of the party, never mind whether the new members really identify themselves with the ideology and political beliefs of the saffron party or not.

It will also be interesting to see if the number of membership will remain the same if the BJP is voted out of power in the State Assembly elections scheduled for 2022.

So even as the membership drive is on, let the BJP led Government also be ready for any eventuality the moment the final agreement with the NSCN (IM) is inked.

It will be interesting to see how the State unit of the BJP will respond when the final pact is signed.

It will also be interesting to see how the State BJP responds when the Citizenship Amendment Bill is passed and enacted.

More particularly how will the people from the Inner Parliamentary Constituency respond, for remember they did elect the BJP candidate while the saffron party had made it clear that CAB will come back if the BJP is voted back to power