The uncontested victory for 10 BJP candidates in Arunachal Pradesh appears to have given a psychological edge to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) across the northeast ahead of the first phase of polling on April 19.
Apart from 16 Lok Sabha constituencies in eight States, elections will be held for the remaining 50 Assembly seats in Arunachal Pradesh and 32 Assembly seats in Sikkim on April 19.
The northeast has a total of 25 seats, 14 of them in Assam. Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Tripura have two seats each while Nagaland, Mizoram, and Sikkim have one seat each.
Soon after winning the Mukto Assembly seat unopposed, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu said the BJP was confident of bagging the 50 seats where its strongest “opponent” is believed to be the National People’s Party (NPP), an NDA constituent. The NPP is contesting 20 seats, one more than traditional rival Congress.
His Assam counterpart, Himanta Biswa Sarma was equally confident about the NDA bagging 22 Lok Sabha seats in the region. “The BJP and its allies hardly have any competition. The contest will be among our own candidates to win by the highest margin, and I am not being complacent about it,” he said at a party event in Udalguri, about 105 km northeast of Guwahati on March 30.
Kamala Kanta Kalita, general secretary of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), said the Opposition parties were in such disarray that the NDA constituents could lend them their leaders or candidates to contest elections in the region. “We can actually field two sets of candidates,” he said.
The AGP and the United People’s Party Liberal are minor partners in the BJP-led government in Assam.
Better coordination
The NDA bagged 19 of the 25 parliamentary constituencies in the northeast in 2019 although the BJP and its allies had a seat-sharing arrangement only in Assam and Nagaland. The NDA displayed better coordination this time in more States.
The NPP decided not to contest the Arunachal East and Arunachal West parliamentary seats but, sticking to “tradition”, did not maintain the alliance with the BJP in the Assembly elections. The BJP returned the favour by deciding to support the NPP in the two Lok Sabha seats in Meghalaya — Shillong and Tura.
The BJP also decided to support the Naga People’s Front in the Outer Manipur parliamentary seat.
The friendship between NDA allies has, however, been paused in Mizoram and Sikkim. The BJP is pitted against the Mizo National Front and the ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) in Mizoram and Sikkim respectively.
The aberrations aside, the NDA has projected itself as a more cohesive conglomeration than the INDIA bloc, which managed to field consensus candidates only in Manipur and Tripura. The Congress is contesting both Lok Sabha seats in Manipur and the Tripura West constituency. Ally CPI(M) is contesting the Tripura East seat reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.
In Assam, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded candidates from Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur parliamentary seats. The opposition alliance in the State, of which the AAP is a member, had decided to let the Assam Jatiya Parishad contest the Dibrugarh seat and Congress the Lakhimpur seat.
The constituents of both the NDA and INDIA blocs have ostensibly kept their alliances on hold for the Assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.
A total of 133 candidates remain in the fray for the 50 seats in Arunachal Pradesh after the last day of withdrawal of nominations for the April 19 elections on Saturday.
The BJP is contesting all 50, the NPP 20, Congress 19, the Nationalist Congress Party 14, the People’s Party of Arunachal 11, the Arunachal Democratic Party four, and the Lok Jan Shakti Party one. The rest are independents.
A total of 147 candidates will vie for the 32 Assembly seats in Sikkim. The SKM and the opposition Sikkim Democratic Front are contesting 32 each while the BJP is contesting 31 and Congress 15.
