Saffron Spreads

After an alliance in Arunachal, the BJP is keen on enhancing its footprint in the northeast.

 

- Soni Mishra

The Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh changed its political colours on September 16, as all but one of its 44 MLAs, including chief minister Pema Khandu joined the People’s Party of Arunachal. A couple of days later, Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congressman who is now a prominent BJP leader in Assam, landed in Itanagar. The BJP extended support to the new PPA government, and Sarma declared that it was a government of the Northeast Democratic Alliance, a conglomerate of parties in the region floated by the saffron party.

Sarma, convener of the NEDA, held a joint legislature party meeting of the ruling party’s MLAs, 11 BJP legislators and two independents, making the imprint of the BJP in the change of government in the state clearly visible. The developments in Arunachal Pradesh left the Congress in shock. Barely a couple of months before had it reclaimed the state, thanks to a Supreme Court verdict, from what it called a BJP-engineered revolt against the Nabam Tuki government.

After capturing Assam in the last assembly elections, the BJP accorded high priority to enhancing its footprint in the northeast. The party considers Assam as its big entry point into the northeast. On May 24, soon after Sarbananda Sonowal was sworn in as the BJP’s first chief minister of Assam, party president Amit Shah announced the creation of the NEDA.