In Northeast, game over for Congress

The Congress’ story of good times in the Northeast, for long the party’s bastion, could well be history. When I talk of the Congress’ good times in the region, I am reminded of Rajiv Gandhi, the charismatic former Prime Minister who personally drove wife Sonia from Aizawl, Mizoram’s capital, to Silchar in Assam, stopping to admire the wilderness along the way. The Congress attained acceptability in the Northeast under Rajiv Gandhi, who managed to deliver quite a few things — the historic Assam Accord in 1985, the Mizo Peace Accord in 1986, and the peace deal with the Tribal National Volunteers (TNV) in Tripura in 1988. I remember hopping onto his helicopter along with a colleague from Nongstoin, in Meghalaya, to Tura in the Garo Hills, returning to Shillong the next day. It was during a campaign tour in Meghalaya where thousands would flock to the venue to catch a glimpse of Rajiv Gandhi and hear him. Those were good days for the Independence-era Congress that was strong in the Northeast despite the region being engulfed in violent insurgencies that pushed sub-national aspirations.

Today the Congress has clearly lost its grip in the Northeast, with desertions turning out to be the order of the day. It began with the revolt in the party in Arunachal Pradesh that led to dissidents deserting the Congress to join the almost-defunct People’s Party of Arunachal, thereby toppling the Nabam Tuki government. Now the government in Itanagar is headed by the PPA-BJP combine.

Next, it was Assam’s turn to bid farewell to the 15-year Tarun Gogoi government. The electorate, with 85 per cent turning up to vote, gave a decisive mandate in favour of the BJP. The saffron party got 60 seats (up from just five in 2011) on its own, while its two regional allies won 26. The BJP’s convincing win in Assam seems to have sparked the fresh banner of revolt in the Congress in states like Tripura and Meghalaya, perhaps due to the feeling within sections in the party that it was headed for more difficult days ahead.

Besides, the Assam win has given a huge impetus to the BJP in Manipur, where Assembly polls are due next year.

Three developments — in Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur — explain the Congress’ sorry state in the region. Its boat started rocking in Tripura just after the Trinamul Congress’ sweeping victory in West Bengal. Six of the state’s 10 Congress MLAs (Tripura has a 60-member Assembly) have since defected and joined Trinamul, and one, surprisingly, has joined the CPI(M). That has brought down the Congress strength in the Left bastion from 10 to just three.

In Meghalaya, too, revolt is brewing in the ruling Congress with several leaders, including MLAs, establishing contact with top BJP leaders. This suggests that the Mukul Sangma government in Meghalaya could face a full-blown rebellion in the coming days. In Manipur, the BJP bagged 10 seats in the 27-member Imphal Municipal Corporation in the just-ended civic polls. The Congress won 12 seats and five have gone to Independents. This is significant as in the last civic polls in 2011, the BJP won only one seat. The BJP in Manipur is upbeat as this performance ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls can be taken as an indication of the saffron upsurge in a state where the Congress has been rather strong.

Again, for the record, the Guwahati Municipal Corporation too has just transformed itself from a Congress-ruled one to BJP after some Congress councillors quit, reducing the party to a minority. This led the Congress mayor to resign, paving the way for the BJP to take over the GMC.

The BJP is clearly working to a plan to consolidate itself in the Northeast, having picked party strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma as convenor of the newly-formed North-East Democratic Alliance, but the Congress shows no sign of a damage-repair strategy as yet. That leaves the field open for the BJP to exploit and expand in the region, that is a relatively new power arena for it. Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was among the main architects of the BJP’s Assam victory, has a clear mandate, that of expanding and strengthening the BJP’s base in the region so that the party could bag most of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in eight states in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In fact, Himanta Biswa Sarma has said he is confident the BJP will come up with an extraordinary performance in the 2019 general election as it will be stronger in most of the northeastern states by then.

What is most baffling is the utter lack of urgency on the part of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi or the AICC to deal with the Congress’ woes in the Northeast. In fact, it was this attitude on Rahul Gandhi’s part that allowed the dissidence in the Assam unit to fester for over two years, and ultimately led to the exit of a dynamic political leader like Himanta Biswa in August last year. The AICC did precious little to tackle the Congress rebellion in Arunachal and Tripura. The story is the same in Meghalaya. The best antidote for the Congress high command at this stage, with Karnataka left as the only big state where it is in power, is to give full autonomy to its state units and loosen its grip to allow local leaders take decisions and engage in workable social engineering. It this doesn’t happen, one could soon see a Congress-mukt Northeast if not a Congress-mukt Bharat! In that event, Rahul Gandhi and his advisers will have to take the blame and accept responsibility.

The writer is a political commentator and executive director of the Guwahati-based Centre for Development & Peace Studies