Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland: Finding true Northeast on election compass

The three poll-bound Northeastern states may be small in terms of their electoral size but hold larger political significance. Aditi Phadnis looks at the political state of play in these states

The three poll-bound Northeastern states may be small in terms of their electoral size but hold larger political significance. While the BJP is pulling out all stops to retain power in Tripura and expand its footprint in the two other states, the Congress and the Left are trying to recapture their lost influence. ADITI PHADNIS looks at the political state of play in these states

TRIPURA: The tribe has spoken

Six days: that’s all it took for bitter rivals to come together and form a common front to fight the Assembly elections together to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Last week, the Congress and the Left Front – once fierce competitors in Tripura - announced, along with the Tripura People’s Front, that they would fight the upcoming Assembly elections together.

Present at the Agartala press conference was Communist Party of India (Marxist) Secretary Jitendra Choudhury, leaders of other Left Front constituents like the Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, All India Forward Bloc, Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist), and Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee President Birajit Sinha. Although seat-sharing negotiations are on, no serious problems are seen in the alliance.

However, problems and challenges remain.

The most formidable among them is the Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance or TIPRA Motha, launched by erstwhile royal Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barma. It is in the process of registering its name with the Election Commission (EC) of India. As a part of the registration process, the party published public notices in two newspapers on January 6 and January 8. Citing those notices, the EC on Thursday invited objections to TIPRA Motha’s registration till January 25.

In the Autonomous District Councils election in 2021, the party fought under the symbol of the now-defunct National Socialist Party of Tripura that had broken away from the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura.

How important a factor TIPRA Motha will be in the politics of the state will be decided in the Assembly election. But it already has suitors – the BJP has approached it for an alliance, but Deb Barma says the BJP will have to agree to the formation of a separate state, Greater Tipraland, for indigenous tribes to get TIPRA Motha’s support.

There are obvious problems with this.

Apart from Jammu & Kashmir, the BJP has not agreed to subdivide or carve up any state. On the other hand, TIPRA Motha might become the third force in the state, preventing both the Congress-Left alliance, as well as the BJP, from forming a government. Negotiations are still on.

NAGALAND: The final frontier

With the ruling Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reaching an agreement on a 40:20 seat-sharing deal last week, the recent chapter of bad blood between the partners appears to have been closed.

Senior NDPP leaders, including NDPP Working President and Co-Founder of the party Alemtemshi Jamir, sitting Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) of NDPP Imkong L Imchen, and other senior party leaders had joined the BJP late last year causing strains in the alliance, with the NDPP charging the BJP of turning on its ally to poach members.

It took extensive diplomacy by North East Democratic Alliance Convener and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to paper over the cracks. The BJP has already announced the seats it will fight.

Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee President K Therie said the party will contest all 60 seats, but didn’t rule out an after-poll alliance with the Naga People’s Front (NPF) and other “like-minded and secular” parties.

The third important actor - NPF - has said it will fight in no more than 30 seats. In 2018, the NDPP (18 MLAs) and the BJP (12 MLAs) came together with the National People’s Party (2 MLAs) to form a government after the BJP broke ties with the NPF. At the time, the NPF had won 26 seats - the single largest number. But in 2021, the NPF and Independents decided to join the NDPP-BJP alliance to seek a collective solution to the Naga problems.

This is why there is currently no Opposition in the Nagaland Assembly. However, a lot depends on the stance taken by the Naga National Political Groups (NNPG), the umbrella organisation of seven armed Naga outfits that joined the peace talks after renewed negotiations between the central government and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), or NSCN(I-M), Nagaland’s largest rebel group, on August 3, 2015.

The NNPG has signed a deal with the NSCN(I-M). If the BJP at the Centre does not resolve the Naga question soon, the insurgency could be revived actively, laying waste to the political gains of the Assembly elections.

MEGHALAYA: Fault in the fault lines

After forging an after-poll alliance in 2018 to come to power, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Conrad Kongkal Sangma’s National People’s Party (NPP) have parted ways and will be going solo in the 2023 Assembly elections.

With political parties and leaders highly active in the state, the NPP has announced a list of 58 candidates for elections to the 60-member Assembly in the state. The BJP is yet to do so.

Conrad, who is the NPP supremo and chief minister of Meghalaya, leads the ruling six-party Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA). The BJP, which has two Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in the state, is part of the MDA.

The MDA government is the third coalition to last its full term in power in the state in over 50 years.

However, cordial ties between the two parties have turned sour over the past five years. Last year, Conrad announced that his party would contest the 2023 Meghalaya elections alone.

There are many reasons for the differences. But the main issue is the way BJP has poached on NPP: four MLAs from Meghalaya - Ferlin C A Sangma, Samuel M Sangma, Benedic R Marak, and Himalaya Muktan Shangpliang - had joined the BJP in Delhi in the presence of party President J P Nadda in December last year.

Conrad comes from a political family - his father Purno Agitok Sangma was a member of the Congress for years - and is seen as a young and ambitious politician who wants to make it big in the Northeast. But he is also one of the most vocal about identity and religion. He has argued that the uniform civil code is a bad idea as it goes against the cultural fabric of Meghalaya. He is bitterly opposed to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and has asked that Meghalaya and Assam be exempted from it.

Meghalaya is a Christian majority. But the BJP is still seen as anti-Christian in the state, although Conrad or his colleagues have not commented publicly on this issue.

This election will decide the future and fate of Conrad and the trajectory of growth of the BJP.