While development was part of the BJP manifesto in the Lok Sabha elections 2019, Narendra Modi's sparkling image swung votes for BJP even as regional parties and Congress struggled to maintain their identities, writes Dr Sabyasachi Mahanta
On May 23, India lost a talking point; it바카라™s favourite past-time. The elections were over, the results declared, and the BJP-led NDA turned in its best-ever performance, including in the Northeast where it won 19 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the eight sister states with contrasting temperaments. The BJP pitched pegs in nine of Assam바카라™s 14 constituencies, its highest ever. The party바카라™s hold on this isolated landmass of India is complete.
Now then, who바카라™s ready for a little schadenfreude? The BJP decimated the Congress as well as the regional groupies바카라”at least in Assam, where the fortunes of AGP and the Bodo Peoples Front are shrinking to the threshold, though they are NDA constituents. The BJP blocked every possibility of division of anti-Congress votes with its successful alliance with almost all regÂional parties in the Northeast. That paid dividends as its allies in Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim won 4 seats바카라”adding to the NDA바카라™s bloated tally.
That the party managed to turn the wheel around is no mean feat because the Northeast have long been the stronghold of a combination of regional parties and the Congress, yet the region remained secluded, never got its share of the development pie, and wallowed in the inflicted바카라”or sometimes self-inflicting바카라”perception of being neglected by successive governments in Delhi바카라™s durbar. The BJP gave special attention to the region in its manifesto itself in 2014바카라”promising development, identity and security. Thenceforth, the NDA government pushed for improving infrastructure in the Northeast. The next step was to rally non-Congress parties to NE Democratic Alliance, a mini-NDA. The aim was to conquer the Northeast바카라”take 25 seats. The NDA was just six short of a whitewash at the end.
But 바카라˜development바카라™ wasn바카라™t the only currency the BJP went to town to shop for votes. It had the 바카라˜clean and strong바카라™ image of PM Modi in its pockets바카라”an undertaking the entire country has the hots for. The muse of Modi swept through the Northeast as well, pushing to the boondocks the people바카라™s heartburn over the citizenship amendment bill. The shrewd strategy of the show-runners, supported by massive publicity, helped further the BJP바카라™s cause바카라”in fact, relegating the bill it promises to enact as a law into a redundant issue. Former CM Tarun Gogoi of the Congress admitted as much, saying his party and the Opposition failed to take the BJP바카라™s flaws and flukes to the grassroots.
(The writer is principal of Gargaon College, Assam)