SHILLONG:
Till just hours before the results were declared, Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) continued to brag that no government could be formed in Meghalaya without the party’s support.
Ultimately, the brag turned out to be hollow by the time the counting of votes on Thursday drew to a close, catapulting the National People’s Party (NPP) to the pole position with 26 seats, while not adding to the BJP’s tally of two seats it had won in 2018.
On the other hand, the United Democratic Party won 11 seats – five more than 2018 – to put itself in a position to be in the government with NPP once again if the latter were to so desire; arithmetically, the NPP has no reason to even seek the BJP’s support to form the government.
Yet, Chief Minister and National President of NPP Conrad K Sangma has spoken to the BJP top brass, asking for the party’s support to form government. This, though, should not reinforce the state BJP’s claim that no government can be formed without its help. Rather, the party should feel obliged to the NPP for being invited.
The results have proven once again that Meghalaya is yet to accept the BJP, and AL Hek and Sanbor Shullai would have won on their own mettle.
Among the BJP’s star campaigners were no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, but even they could not swing the fortunes in the party’s favour, as the large crowds gathered to greet them yielded only two seats in the Assembly, none of which are from the rural heartlands of the hills.
In the capital, the party lost in North Shillong, where Modi held a roadshow and a public meeting drawing a large crowd just a day before campaigning came to an end; he said he was overwhelmed by the outpouring of people’s love for the BJP and saw the `lotus’ blooming in Meghalaya.
Before Modi, Shah had also expressed confidence that BJP would come to power in the state, which he dubbed as the “most corrupt” in the country, and threatened to send to jail all those who were responsible for it.
Now that NPP has sought BJP’s support, it remains to be seen whether Shah’s threat is as empty as the state BJP’s brag of being indispensable to formation of the government.