Manipur: How BJP Plans To Keep Congress Out Of Power 

Who has the moral right to form the next government in Manipur? The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Congress? The Congress was quick to stake claim citing the fact that it has emerged as the single largest party in the recently concluded elections. The BJP, may have bagged only 21 seats as against the Congress’ 28 but its allies bring nine more seats to the table in the 60-member legislative assembly.

The Naga People's Front (NPF), which rules Nagaland in alliance with the BJP, is a part of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance that has Assam BJP strongman Himanta Biswa Sarma as its convenor. The NPF won four seats in Manipur this time.

The National People's Party (NPP), launched by the late Purno Agitok Sangma in 2013, is also a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The NPP also won four seats in Manipur.

The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) led by Ram Vilas Paswan is also a constituent of the NDA and won one seat in Manipur.

Thus, allies of the BJP won nine seats between themselves and added to its 21 Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs); this political formation has a total of 30 MLAs.

Add to this the lone Trinamool Congress MLA Tongram Robindro Singh, who has decided to support the BJP, and the number goes up to 31, which is a simple majority in the house of 60.

An independent MLA, Ashab Uddin, has also pledged support to the BJP after having been abducted and kept confined by a desperate Congress.

The BJP, NPF, NPP and the LJP had not fought the elections together. They did not have a pre-poll alliance. But that does not prevent them from forming a post-poll alliance, especially when, at the national level and in some other states, they are allies.

Post-independence history of India is replete with numerous examples of the Congress forming governments in states and even at the Centre through post-poll alliances, most of them being unprincipled and opportunistic ones. The coming together of the BJP, NPF, NPP and LJP in Manipur was therefore quite on expected lines.

The BJP is also citing higher vote-share to bolster its bid.

The BJP, on its own, garnered 36.3 per cent of the votes this time, while the Congress’ vote share is a lower 35 per cent. The combined vote share of the NPF, NPP and the LJP is 10.3 per cent. Thus, the BJP and its three allies together polled 46.6 per cent of the votes. If the vote share of the lone Trinamool Congress MLA, who has joined the BJP, is added to this, the total vote share of the 31 MLAs whose names were submitted to Manipur Governor Najma Heptullah by the BJP at 8 p m on Sunday stands at 47.9 per cent.

The Congress has claimed that it should be invited to form the government by virtue of being the single-largest party. This would give an opportunity to the Congress to indulge in horse-trading, a game it has perfected to a fine art over the last few decades.

The Congress’ propensity to cut unethical deals and buy MLAs was on full display on Saturday afternoon even as the final results were yet to come in. Aided and abetted by senior central Congress leaders C P Joshi and Oscar Fernandes, who are camping in state capital Imphal, state Congress leaders started reaching out to the NPP MLAs and even the lone LJP legislator, reportedly offering them huge sums and promising lucrative portfolios.

That the Congress initiated this game of horse-trading was evident when it whisked away Conrad Sangma, son of late P A Sangma and Lok Sabha Member from Meghalaya’s Tura constituency, to meet incumbent Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh at the latter’s ancestral home in Thoubal, about 46 kilometres from Imphal, on Saturday evening.

Conrad Sangma, who heads the NPP now, won from Tura in the bypolls necessitated by the death of his father last year after a bitterly-fought battle with the Congress, which fielded Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma’s wife, Dikkanchi Shira. With considerable help from the BJP, he inflicted an ignominious defeat on Shira.

There has been no love lost between the Congress and Conrad, especially since P A Sangma (Conrad’s father) was expelled from the Congress after he raised the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin in 1999.

The Congress’ anxiety was evident from the manner in which it held an independent MLA — Ashab Uddin hostage. Ashab Uddin, who won from Jiribam constituency bordering Assam, was confined to his constituency by Congress leaders and workers from Saturday afternoon and then forcibly whisked off to Assam's capital Guwahati at night.

Congress leader and incumbent agriculture minister Abdul Nasir was sent to Guwahati to escort Ashab Uddin back to Imphal on Sunday afternoon. But as the Air India flight 889 with Ashab Uddin and his captor landed at Imphal, Ashab Uddin broke free and sought the help of Central Industrial Security Force jawans at the airport.

Fortunately for him, newly-elected BJP MLA Thongjam Biswajit Singh, who was present at the airport to receive some relatives rescued Ashab Uddin. The independent legislator could not leave the airport as Ibobi’s son Okram Surajkumar Singh and nephew Okram Henry (both also newly-elected MLAs) had laid siege to the airport along with hundreds of aggressive party supporters, all ready to recapture Ashab Uddin. Ashab Uddin went back to Guwahati and will only return to Imphal once he feels safe enough to do so after the formation of a BJP-led government in the state.

The BJP has cited all these instances of attempted horse-trading by the Congress to buttress the party’s claims. As for those commentators who are criticising Governor Najma Heptullah for not inviting the Congress to form the government, they ought to be reminded that the single-largest party does not always earn the right to be invited to form the government.

For instance, in 2004, the Congress was invited to form the government in Karnataka after it stitched a post-poll deal with the Janata Dal (Secular) even though the BJP emerged as the single-largest party.

More recently, in 2013, even though the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in the Delhi Assembly polls, it was the Congress-Aam Aadmi Party alliance that was invited to form the government.