Viral question : Who will be the next CM :: Stories of 'camps and camps'
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: March 14, 2022 -

The BJP is home comfortably and from with whom it may go in Government formation, the overriding question which has piqued everyone’s interest is who will be the top man.

Will the BJP continue with N Biren as the Chief Minister or will it adopt the Assam model and settle for someone else.

No easy answer here, but the answer will come sooner than later but that has not stopped tongues from wagging with many keen political observers coming out with what they think comes closest to the truth.

With the BJP Central leadership not naming a Chief Ministerial candidate in the just held Assembly election, speculations have been rife on whether there will be a change at the top post or not.

The Assam model is something which has been talked about for quite some time, but remember in Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP had a natural choice.

A man with years of experience and a sort of a trouble shooter and seen as the man behind the North East Democratic Alliance, a conglomerate of political parties which are opposed to the Congress, in Sarma the BJP just had the right man to name as the Chief Minister of Assam after the BJP stormed back to power in the 2021 Assembly election in the neighbouring State.

Remember too that Himanta Biswa Sarma played no mean role in ensuring that the BJP beat the Congress in the numbers game after the 2017 Assembly election here.

The important question is whether the BJP has such a personality here in Manipur who can seamlessly go on to occupy the chair of the Chief Minister.

The Central BJP leadership must be studying the situation here and with so many talks doing the round of so and so camps being set up, the sooner the question is settled the better it would be for everyone.

For the BJP, the drama may just be hotting up and the interesting question is whether any voice of dissent may be raised in the foreseeable future when the Chief Minister is named for the second innings of the BJP Government here.

Or will there be no voice of dissent when the next Chief Minister is named ?

These are all speculative questions at the moment, but the very fact that talks are doing the round of so and so camps being set up, suggest that there could be more than one man for the race to the post of Chief Minister.

As NPP chief Conrad Sangma was candid enough to admit, the ball is now in the court of the BJP and the saffron party will have to decide whether it will continue with the coalition model or go it alone.

Or better still what would be the stand of the Central BJP leadership on the coalition question ?

Will the BJP here at Imphal look over its partner in the NDA at New Delhi such as the JD (U), NPF and the NPP?

Assembly election at Meghalaya is next year and for the saffron party to make any headway in the neighbouring State, it may just need to tag along with the NPP.

Will this equation be taken into consideration while working out the Government model in Manipur ?

Tough to say which way the wind will blow, but it is clear that the BJP will first need to settle the question of who should be the next Chief Minister and with which party it can go along in the next Government.

Apart from this, it is also interesting to see video shots of some elected representatives of the Assembly going on the offensive against folks who they said did not vote for them in the election.

A sad reflection it is on the political dharma of some elected representatives that they have forgotten that in getting elected they represent the Constituency and not only the people who voted and supported them during the election.

The beauty of democracy and the understanding of people’s representatives lies in this fact.

People’s representatives mean that all the elected honorables represent the people and not just who voted and supported them during the election.

Unfortunate it is to see that some of the very set of elected representatives fail to get this registered in their consciousness.