Lotus retains its grip in northeast

New Delhi: Lotus retained its grip in the northeast as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and allies returned to power in Tripura and Nagaland and were set to form the government in Meghalaya as well.

In Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma’s National People’s Party (NPP) won 26 seats but fell four short of the majority mark of 30 in the 59-member Meghalaya Assembly. Sangma reportedly called Union Home Minister Amit Shah to seek support. The BJP secured three seats in Meghalaya while the Congress and the Trinamool Congress won 5 seats each.

In Tripura, the BJP and its ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), could scrape through by winning 33 seats  – just two more than the majority mark of 31. in a close contest with the Left + Congress. The TIPRA Motha bagged 13 seats and the BJP has reached out to it as well.

In Nagaland, in alliance with Chingwang Konyak’s Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), the BJP raced into the lead right from the beginning.

Meanwhile, the BJP won in the byelection to one assembly seat in another state of the northeast, Arunachal Pradesh and was leading in one of the two seats in Maharashtra where the Congress won the other seat. The Congress also won the seat in West Bengal and was leading in the byelection to one assembly seat in Tamil Nadu as well. in Jharkhand, the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) won the only seat for which the byelection was held in Ramgarh.

– global bihari bureau