Team News Riveting
Guwahati, March 7
With Neiphiu Rio and Conrad Sangma taking over as the Chief Minister of Nagaland and Meghalaya respectively on Tuesday with the firm backing of the BJP, the saffron party has further consolidated its presence in the political landscape of the north east.
The seven sisters, as the seven states of the North East are known, were once hostile to the BJP. Such was the situation that never ever the political pundits had envisaged that lotus would bloom in the region.
While BJP retained Tripura by its own, it has decisive presence in the government formed in Meghalaya and Nagaland.
The three states are as different from one another but the assembly elections outcomes have thrown up some intriguing commonalities with national implications. The BJP is now, fully and firmly, a natural party of governance in the North East of India. Its acceptability has spread to encompass demographics which traditionally shunned the BJP, and it has demonstrated that the party’s remarkable ascendancy in the region is no flash in the pan.
The formation of two governments underlined that BJP is now the preferred ally for regional parties in the north east. In Meghalaya, simmering differences between the BJP and Conrad Sangma spilled out, the latter himself was positively effusive in his praise for Prime Minister Modi at a year-end event in Shillong.
No doubts, the electorate trend in the North East has clearly demonstrated that Prime Narendra Modi’s decision to doggedly focus on the North East’s development, from 2014 onwards, is starting to pay consistent political dividends.
For decades after Independence, the North East was India’s forgotten corner. But from 2014 onwards, the BJP’s decision to aggressively develop infrastructure in the region meant that opportunities started to abound. Connectivity improved, villages started getting electricity, trade grew, and the quality of education available intra-regionally went up by leaps and bounds.
The political developments make BJP the party to beat next year in 25 Lok Sabha seats.
The North East has made a clear choice, and there is no going back. The BJP has unequivocally demonstrated that development talks louder than secularism.
