India Today Conclave : Why BJP wins in NE ? Biswa Sarma holds fort
Source: The Sangai Express / Courtesy India Today
Mumbai, March 10 2018:
At a time when regional parties like Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Shiv Sena are threatening to walk out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP's Man Friday in the North East Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the party would not enter into "their terrain" .
Speaking at India Today Conclave 2018 in Mumbai today, Assam Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the BJP has a clear cut policy that "we will not encroach upon their political territory".
The BJP has decided that it would let the regional parties and leaders grow along with the party.
"In the last three years, the BJP has not inducted a single leader from the regional parties in the North East.
We will not enter their territory.
That is why we have formed alliances with them and formed Governments in the North East," said Sarma.
He also rejected the charge that the BJP was offering any kind of inducement to regional parties in the North East.
"We respect regional parties," Sarma asserted, adding, "The BJP is the answer for removing regional disparity" .
Sarma blamed the "feudal culture" in the Congress party for his parting ways with the grand old party.
He said, "You can ask any Congress Chief Minister if he has dined with Mrs Gandhi or had breakfast with her .
This kind of master-servant relation does not exist in the BJP" .
"When I joined the BJP, the new culture was film-like that I could walk into the dining room of party president Amit Shah directly.
There is no feudalism in the BJP that exists in the Congress," he said.
Significantly after the BJP swept the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, it has made inroads in the North East, bagging Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Tripura.
It is also in the Govt at Nagaland and Meghalaya.