Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, had to rush to fire-fight in Manipur after four NPP MLAs led by former DGP of Manipur, Y Joykumar Singh raised the banner of revolt against the BJP-led Biren Singh Government. The chairperson, North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma too had to rush to Manipur at the directive of Home Minister Amit Shah to calm tempers there even as three BJP MLAs also decided to quit the coalition government and the Party. Dr Biswa Sarma has been on the frontline fighting Covid 19 in his state – Assam but that duty had to be shelved, because, evidently party matters are more pressing than the pandemic. Similar is the case with Conrad Sangma.
That a senior politician like Y Joykumar Singh the NPP MLA and Deputy Chief Minister of Manipur broke away from the NDA coalition shows that the Biren Singh Government was sidelining him and his colleagues and they felt politically sterile. That Party Chief Conrad Sangma endorsed the stand of the 4 NPP MLAs to leave the Biren Singh led Government, “in the interest of the people,” and that he does not see their intent of joining the Congress Party as problematic shows that the NPP is a Party bereft of ideology and is guided purely by opportunistic goals to be in power with whichever party can make it to the power grid. Considering that the NPP and Congress are arch rivals in Meghalaya, a modicum of political decency would have made it untenable for the NPP MLAs in Manipur to even consider aligning with the Congress Party there. But that’s politics at its basest.
Currently the NPP has 5 MLAs in Arunachal Pradesh, 4 in Manipur, 20 in Meghalaya and 2 in Nagaland. Governments in the North Eastern states are congenitally shaky because of the coalition arrangements and the pressures and pulls for favours, businesses and power. Also, governments in the region mimic one another. In Arunachal Pradesh the NPP had offered unconditional support to the BJP-led Government from the outside while in Nagaland the NPP has merged with the Nagaland Democratic Peoples’ Party (NDPP). NPP’s stand is therefore fluid. It is everything to everyone. So what happens if the NPP encounters problems in Arunachal Pradesh or Nagaland? Will Conrad Sangma leave his work as CM and go fire-fighting in these states? The much maligned Congress Party had in the very least followed the protocol of one man, one post so that people holding ministerial positions are not burdened with running the Party. But the NPP is yet to emerge from its dynastic format. Why blame only the Congress?
