‘3rd term chances for BJP getting bleaker’
Trinamul Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee said on Wednesday that the BJP’s chances of returning to power are becoming bleak while predicting a rich harvest for her party in Bengal.
Now Meghalaya and Mizoram have the only two Congress administrations left in the North-east where at one point of time it ruled the roost in most of the seven states. While the BJP conquered Assam in 2014 in a decisive manner, it grabbed Arunachal Pradesh without even having to go to the hustings and in a manner clearly undemocratic and unethical. The Congress in Manipur lost to the BJP despite being on top in the numbers game and surrendered gracefully to the democratic process. Now the BJP anaconda is slithering towards the last two surviving Congress-ruled states, Meghalaya and Mizoram, which are going to the polls in February/March and November 2018, respectively. In Mizoram the BJP tested the waters in 1993 and again in 1998 but failed to open its account. But in 2003 when Mizo National Front chief Zoramthanga was the chief minister, the BJP had an opportunity to rise and shine as the former had maintained a good relationship with saffron party leaders. At that point of time the ethnic minority groups had a say in at least 10 assembly constituencies and the BJP had already made inroads into the Chakma stronghold. They were settled in Mizoram by the Nehru government in 1964 on humanitarian grounds. Not for nothing is the BJP interested in early rehabilitation of nearly 30,000 Bru refugees who, after fleeing Mizoram in 1997, are biding their time in Tripura’s evacuation camps.
In the late 1990s, when in power at the Centre, the BJP also tried to make inroads into Tripura’s tribal areas by joining hands with a party that had links with militant groups. The BJP was able to send seven MLAs to the Nagaland assembly in 2003 with the proxy support of the NSCN (M). The results of the just-concluded Manipur assembly election could have been different without the tacit support of the NSCN (IM). Clearly this is no burden on the BJP’s conscience.
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