Congress stakes claim to government as leader of a new front after defections from BJP and its allies
While the BJP may have been successful with Operation Lotus — or breaking fragile parties to shore up its numbers for power — in the heartland, that strategy has clearly failed in Manipur. The Congress has learnt lessons from its playbook, got nine legislators to its side, formed a new secular front and staked claim to form the Government in the northeastern State. With this move, the Congress hopes to neutralise its own desertions in Gujarat and stay relevant though it lost the lone seat in the Rajya Sabha polls here, the immediate trigger for such developments. For the BJP, this is embarrassing because most of the defections happened from its alliance partner in the State, the National People’s Party (NPP), led by Conrad Sangma, someone whom the BJP groomed as one of its bankable faces in the North-east and someone who has built his political stock on anti-Congressism. Clearly, Sangma was caught on the wrong foot, not knowing what the State unit was doing or how upset it was with the BJP’s high-handed manners, enough to destabilise a seemingly comfortable arrangement. And at this juncture, he cannot justify why his men flocked to the Congress in Manipur while in his home State of Meghalaya, the NPP-BJP coalition is going strong. At the moment, his credibility within the NDA is under a cloud. But this crisis is not entirely unexpected in the North-east where loyalty is a small price to pay for getting a plum post in governance. Where opportunism and individual aggrandisement matter more than pre-poll commitments and each State has its own dynamic. As a result, the region has seen many regimes change hands mid-term. Why the Manipur rebellion is serious is because all four NPP legislators who quit, including Deputy Chief Minister Y Joykumar Singh, were also Ministers in the Biren Singh-led Government. But they were not happy with the Chief Minister’s style of functioning and his refusal to consult them in matters of policy. Besides, Singh, while allocating portfolios to NPP colleagues for the sake of optics, had always wanted to oust Joykumar from the Cabinet on one pretext or the other. Matters came to a head when he stripped Joykumar of the key finance portfolio. The last straw on the camel’s back was when Joykumar raised the issue of foodgrain allocation during lockdown, saying the announcements didn’t match the distribution on the ground. Some BJP MLAs, too, were miffed by Singh’s autocratic style of functioning that they felt was costing their party’s image among locals. BJP Minister Thongam Biswajit Singh, who took the lead in demanding the Chief Minister’s resignation, was divested of power and public works portfolios. The BJP should not have underestimated the brewing dissent in what it considers a trusted ally. Further, it should have given a listen to its own MLAs and Ministers, who had been demanding Singh’s ouster and pleaded their case before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then party chief Amit Shah. So once Joykumar resigned, his tidal pull ensured that he got an MLA from the Trinamool Congress and an Independent. Then three more disgruntled MLAs of the BJP jumped ship.
The Congress (20 MLAs), the NPP, Trinamool Congress and an Independent, have formed the Secular Progressive Front and have claimed the support of 26 MLAs. This is undoubtedly a moral victory for the Congress as it had emerged as the single-largest party with 28 seats in the 2017 Assembly polls but was robbed of a shot at power. The BJP, which had won just 21 seats, poached seven of its MLAs and formed an unholy alliance with the NPP, Naga People’s Front (NPF) and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). It dangled plum Ministry posts to its allies, disappointing its own legislators who had worked the ground. With the current strength of the House at 59 — one Congress MLA was suspended by the Supreme Court — and assuming the seven Congress MLAs, who crossed over to the BJP before, are suspended, the new House tally will be lower. In that case, the Congress would have 26 legislators, one more than the majority mark. Of course, the BJP won’t give up easily either and there may be some shoplifting from its end, too. The Rajya Sabha win may just give it a breather. Either way, a new regime would continue to be unstable. It is now up to Governor Najma Heptulla to ensure fairplay and uphold constitutional principles instead of taking sides as has become the norm in other States. Heptulla has had a stellar innings as a parliamentarian and, therefore, is not expected to stray from the rulebook.
