New Delhi: The Congress continued to be on a slippery slope in the northeast, ending up on the losing side in all three election states Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura. There was some solace for the party however — it now has MLAs in Meghalaya, a state where it had been reduced by defections to zero.
The Congress managed to secure four seats in Meghalaya. In Tripura, where it had only one MLA, the party now has two and is leading in another seat. In Nagaland, where it could field candidates in only 22 seats, it failed to make any gains. It currently has zero MLAs in the state assembly.
The BJP and its ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (ITFP) are set to cruise to a comfortable majority in Tripura, while its alliance with the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) is set to return to power in Nagaland.
In Meghalaya, the National People’s Party (NPP) is within touching distance of the halfway mark and there is speculation, following a midnight meeting between Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma of the BJP, that the two allies may come back together.
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Meghalaya
The Congress made the biggest gains in Meghalaya, where it had won 21 seats in the 2018 elections, making it the single largest party. But a series of defections to the NPP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), and the deaths of a few MLAs had reduced its strength to zero in the assembly.
The Congress had fielded candidates on all 60 seats here. It has already won four seats and is leading in one more. However, the biggest blow for the party came when Lok Sabha MP Vincent Pala lost from the Sutnga Saipung constituency to the NPP’s Santa Mary Shylla.
Meghalaya was also the only one among the three states where former party president Rahul Gandhi campaigned. The party may have taken the right call in sending its biggest crowd-puller there, but its performance remains underwhelming in a state where political parties often matter less than the leaders who represent them.
Nagaland
The Congress’s performance in Nagaland shows that the party’s war cry of ‘Congress ase upay ase (where there is Congress, there is a way)’ failed to strike the right chord, as did its poll planks of corruption and unemployment.
The party had fielded candidates on only 22 seats here.
Despite much public expectation, Rahul Gandhi stayed away from the party’s campaign in Nagaland where Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor emerged as one of the Congress’s key faces. Party president Mallikarjun Kharge too addressed a rally in Dimapur on 21 February.
The Congress’s non-performance assumes significance in the ‘opposition-less’ Nagaland assembly where all three parties with a notable presence — BJP, NDPP and NPF — are part of the government.
Despite being a part of the Neiphiu Rio-led government, the NPF did not contest the assembly elections in a pre-poll alliance with the NDPP-BJP.
Tripura
In Tripura, the Congress’s tally in assembly is set to rise from one to three with both state president Birajit Sinha and senior leader Sudip Roy Barman having already been declared victorious.
The party had fielded candidates on only 13 seats here while the rest were contested by its ally, the Left Front.
However, its performance may have left its partner high and dry as initial trends suggested joining hands with the Congress did not benefit the Left Front, which was hoping to return to power in a state it had ruled for 25 years on the trot before being dislodged by the BJP juggernaut in 2018.
Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president Birajit Sinha and senior leader Sudeep Roy Barman (the lone Congress MLA in the outgoing assembly) won their seats.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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