Tall Promises, But Missing In Action. Will Congress Change Its Attitude Towards Northeast?

Although Congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi addressed a rally in Meghalaya's capital Shillong this week and joined the Northeast poll campaign, it can't be denied that the national leadership is late to the party.

Source : PTI

With elections on February 27, the campaigning in Nagaland is in the last phase. To boost the morale of the grand old party, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge was in the state this week. Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, who contested against Kharge in the Congress presidential polls last year, was in the state too to campaign for the party. 

During his rally at Diphupar village public ground this week, Kharge attacked the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, accusing it of delaying the Naga political solution. He also asserted that the Congress-led alliance of like-minded parties would come to power at the Centre in 2024. This statement indicated that the grand old party hasn’t vacated the space of leading the opposition against Modi — and as expected this statement made in the Northeast was heard in the corridors of the national capital too. 

In Nagaland, the prospects of the Congress appear bleak. The party is led by Kewekhape Therie, who himself has failed to win the last three assembly elections. During the last elections, the grand old party had contested 18 seats but failed to open its account. It got a meagre 2.1 per cent votes, even less than Janata Dal (United), which bagged a seat with a vote percentage of 4.5 per cent. This time, the party is contesting 23 seats and hopes it will win some of them. It had put up candidates for 25 seats but two of them withdrew from the contest. One of these withdrawals resulted in the BJP winning a seat unopposed. The party's strategy seems to be to win as many seats as possible and look for a post-poll alliance partner to form a government. 

Although Congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi addressed a rally in Meghalaya's capital Shillong this week and joined the Northeast poll campaign, it can't be denied that the national leadership is late to the party. The central leadership was mostly missing from the poll campaign of Tripura, where voting was held on February 16. Neither Rahul nor Kharge visited that state, where the party had a seat-sharing with CPI(M)-led Left Front and contested on 13 seats. In that state, the party has recently seen the revival of its fortunes but it is best known to the central party leadership why the senior leaders chose not to campaign. 

While it's true that Rahul was busy with his Bharat Jodo Yatra and didn’t even campaign in Himachal Pradesh, where the Congress defeated the incumbent BJP, his sister and party’s general secretary Priyanka Gandhi had campaigned in that hill state. She, however, gave Tripura a miss.

In comparison, the BJP’s campaign has focussed on the region with senior party leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing rally after rally to boost the party’s morale. Modi has already addressed three rallies in Tripura and one each in Nagaland and Meghalaya on Friday. This week, Shah had been in the eastern part of Nagaland for two days. It has to be mentioned that this region has seen less development in comparison to other parts of the state and that’s the reason people of this region have been demanding a separate Frontier Nagaland. 

Shah stayed there for two days and his assurance for development is no doubt going to boost the BJP’s image among the people of the region and the state, where Christians are in a majority. The Congress can keep complaining about the BJP being an “anti-Christian party” but it has to introspect why it has been reduced to a minor player in the region, which was once the party stronghold. It has to really address the allegation that it ignores the region.

Amid Talks Of Opposition Unity, Rahul attacks TMC in Meghalaya

This week, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi joined the poll campaign in the Northeast by addressing an election rally in Shillong where he attacked the ruling National People’s Party over the issue of corruption. He also criticised the BJP, which was also a partner of the NPP-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance, and the RSS, the ideological mentor for the saffron party, for trying to impose “one idea” on the entire country and “destroying the country’s religious, cultural and linguistic diversity”.

Rahul has always been at the forefront when it comes to attacking the BJP and the RSS — and there is nothing new in these attacks. However, the significant take from his election speech was his attack on Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which has emerged as one of the main players in this Northeastern state this time. Rahul accused the TMC of helping the BJP, and this didn’t go well with the TMC leadership, with party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee responding that the grand old party has failed to stop the BJP juggernaut. 

The TMC suddenly appeared in Meghalaya in 2021 when 12 Congress MLAs led by former chief minister Mukul Sangma joined the party. Not only this, but in Goa too the TMC strengthened itself by weakening the Congress and contested the state elections last year. Although it failed to even open its account, TMC divided the anti-BJP vote there. Even in the recently concluded Tripura polls, TMC contested 28 seats with former state Congress president Pijush Kanti Bishwas as its new head of the state unit. Despite all the media hype, TMC wasn’t a major player in the elections. In some seats, the party is expected to cut into the anti-BJP votes.

At a time when there is talk of opposition unity, this fighting between the Congress and the TMC shows that there are still many gaps within the opposition camp that need to be bridged. Obviously, the Congress has reasons for its sour relations with Mamata’s party. But it can’t avoid its own mistakes. 

In Meghalaya, the party's decision to make Vincent Pala, the Lok Sabha MP from Shillong, the party president of the state unit didn’t go well with veteran leader Mukul Sangma. As a result, he joined the TMC along with 11 MLAs. It's another story that four of these MLAs have already left the TMC. 

Meanwhile, the TMC has to examine its own rhetoric of resisting the BJP. It's true that it defeated the BJP in the 2021 assembly polls in Bengal, but it has been seen in the past that the party has completely failed to stop its MLAs, whether in Manipur or Tripura, from defecting to the BJP.

Assam: Is BJP Trying To Bring BPF On NDA Board?

The statement of United People’s Party Liberal chief Pramod Boro, who is also the chief of Bodoland Territorial Council, that it is ready to talk with its rival Bodoland People’s Front assumes significance. UPPL is currently a partner of the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led NDA government in the state. Definitely, this statement of Pramod Boro has the blessings of the BJP. The saffron party, which has set the target to win at least 12 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in 2024, seems to bring BPF led by Hagrama Mohillary on its side. In the last Lok Sabha polls, BJP won 10 seats while allies BPF and Assam Gana Parishad drew a blank.

Things between the BJP and the BPF turned bitter when the saffron party abandoned the latter to ally with the UPPL. The UPPL is currently the ruling party in the Bodoland Territorial Council in alliance with the BJP. It was then said that North East Democratic Alliance convenor Himanta Biswa Sarma, present chief minister of the state, wasn’t eager to continue the alliance with BPF, which later joined the Congress-led Grand Alliance. 

However, the BPF was able to win only three seats while UPPL won seven in the state elections of 2021. Later, the BPF pulled out of the Grand Alliance and went soft on the BJP, and lent outside support to the present NDA government in the state. The BPF even voted for NDA candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls held last year. In 2019, BPF as a constituent of the NDA contested the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha seat but failed to defeat independent Naba Kumar Sarania. On the other hand, BPF chief Hagrama declared that there will be no alliance with any party and that his party will contest two Lok Sabha seats — Kokrajhar and Mangoldoi. This seems to be a part of pressure tactics from the BPF’s side. It remains to be seen if the BJP is able to bring the two rivals — BPF and UPPL — together on the NDA platform to achieve its target for 2024.

The author is a political commentator.

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