Saffron sway across Northeast while Congress go nonexistent

The election results in the northeastern states are here. Nothing elicited big surprises as the numbers went as predicted by the exit poll experts. However, the victory is no menial one for the BJP. Back in 2018, they did the unthinkable starting a cleansing act by ousting the Manik Sarkar-led CPM from Tripura. The incident went into the annals of Indian polity as the CPM was incumbent for 25 years in Tripura and lead a power game that was unrivaled. Immediately after the ascension in 2018, the BJP demolished the statue of Russian revolutionary Lenin, just to notify everyone about the saffron party's arrival. Op-eds and columns from analysts and other contrarians' minds went a flurry on national media in anguish over the fast-arriving saffronisation of the once red fortress.

Many ridiculed the victory as a fluke and prophesized about the CPM gaining back a foothold in four years’ time. The big minds who wrote countless words on dailies will be surely taken aback by the results. Their findings of a fluke victory were directed to drains as BJP scripted a thumping victory that reassures that the saffron party is not going anywhere in Tripura. The congress once a ubiquitous and fortifying presence has vapored into thin air with a poor show that surely needs a crosscheck, at least twice.

The usual narrative of the BJP doing a landslide can take a backseat this time in Tripura. The Tipra Motha Party founded by royal member Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb gained inroads and ended up the second-best behind BJP in Tripura. Pradyot a former congress party worker split a couple of years back over differences with the party cadres. His party mainly favors the indigenous tribes in Tripura and ergo fared well in that belt. He has also decided to not go in alliance with CPM or congress to fight BJP but called for a prudent approach that will see his party helping the government when time demands. Even with the tribal autonomous election, Tipra Motha has been showing its mettle. Now, appalling the rare opposition bonhomie of CPM-Congress, the TMP has pocketed a big share of CPM votes that would have helped the red party get at least a consolation one in Tripura.

Meanwhile, Meghalaya offers more drama as no party has got a majority to form the government. It will be two-three days of tumultuous politicking which will ensure that the tides are drifting in the hills of Shillong. Nagaland has retained the BJP-led allied government and will see two new women faces in the assembly, a first in the history of the northeastern state.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra by congress garnered many headlines and gifted the required elixer for the once-fading domination of the party in India. But the absence of Gandhi scion from the northeastern elections was palpable, while Prime minister Narendra Modi hassled down the terrains more than ten times, which says a lot about the unquenchable thirst and the industrious mind of the ruling saffron party to be in power.