GUWAHATI: The upcoming elections in three states of the Northeast will be a battle for survival for the Congress which once ruled the entire region but has now gotten reduced to a shadow of its glorious past. The Congress’ slide in the Northeast began after the BJP’s emergence as a powerhouse in 2014

Simultaneous elections in the 60-member Assemblies of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura are expected in February.

As it appears now, the Congress is not in the race to power in any of these states. It lacks leaders after many of them embraced the ruling party and other parties over a period of time.

The Congress does not have a single MLA in Nagaland, just one in Tripura and five in Meghalaya.

However, the five in Meghalaya were suspended earlier this year by the party’s central leadership for cosying up to the Conrad K Sangma government.

The Congress had emerged as the single largest party in the 2018 Meghalaya Assembly elections but the National People’s Party (NPP)-led motley alliance formed the government. 

In November last year, 12 of 17 Congress MLAs in Meghalaya, led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, jumped ship to wear Trinamool Congress (TMC) colours. Their desertion relegated the grand old party to a more minor party and made the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC the state’s principal Opposition party overnight. TMC had no base in the state prior to that.

Shillong MP H Pala is now Congress’s lone prominent face in the Christian-majority state. The Congress will not, perhaps, have a single MLA by the time it goes to elections as the five suspended legislators have more or less ditched the party and are likely to contest the polls on the tickets of other political parties.

In Tripura, Sudip Roy Barman is the Congress’ only MLA. He had won the last election on the BJP’s ticket and was inducted into the ministry but he resigned from the Assembly and the party in February this year after falling out with the then-Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb. Later, he won a by-election, necessitated by his resignation.

The Congress had failed to win a single seat in the 2018 Tripura elections which the BJP swept, decimating the Left. 

The Congress had also drawn a blank in the Nagaland elections of 2018. The party, which had won many elections under former Chief Minister SC Jamir, is now virtually lost in the state which is ruled by a coalition of BJP, Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party, and Naga People’s Front. All MLAs in the state are from these three parties.

The elections in the three states are around the corner but not many people are talking about the Congress.

Party leaders, however, try to put up a brave face. “So what if we have one MLA? Atal Bihari Vajpayee had just two MPs but he went on to become the Prime Minister,” Tripura Congress chief Birajit Sinha told this newspaper.  “There is a lot going on in Tripura. People will vote us to power,” he said confidently, just days after seven Congress leaders, led by former state chief Pijush Kanti Biswas, joined the TMC in Tripura.

The Congress in Nagaland sounded equally optimistic. “The Congress is the only alternative and people will vote for it. Not only has the Naga political issue remained unresolved, but the state, under the present government, is also facing bifurcation,” state Congress president K Therie said referring to the demand of an influential tribal organization for the creation of “Frontier Nagaland” state in eastern Nagaland.

PATNA:  Even as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar continues to assert that he is not a PM aspirant in the next Lok Sabha election, his close aides have been obliquely speaking about it, triggering speculation whether JD (U) may take a tough stand on the leadership issue.

While addressing the JD-U’s plenary session in the state capital on Sunday, Nitish said, “There is no scope for a third front in 2024 as there will only be the ‘main front’ against the BJP.” He said anti-BJP parties could win the 2024 Lok Sabha election with a huge majority if they came on a single platform.
“I will keep making efforts to make it possible. It depends on opposition parties,” he said.

Nitish also accused the BJP of working against the JD-U in the 2020 assembly elections even when his party was in the NDA. He said it was the reason his party could not perform “satisfactorily” in the previous assembly elections.

Taking a dig at BJP without naming it, he said, “They should be reminded that never before had our party won fewer seats, either in assembly polls of 2005 or 2010. In 2020, we got fewer seats as they (BJP) made attempts to ensure the defeat of our candidates.”

Reiterating his demand for according special status for Bihar, the CM alleged that Bihar was denied all help by the Centre. He said the country could not be put on a growth trajectory until poor states were developed.

Meanwhile, senior JD (U) minister Sanjay Jha, considered close to Nitish, told party leaders and workers in the plenary session that “we should work for achieving two goals – one that the JD (U) is accorded the status of a national party, and second, we should ensure that Nitish unfurls the national flag at the Red fort.” He said the Opposition was clueless as to what would happen in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and how democracy would be saved.

“After Nitish has snapped ties with NDA, there is a glimmer of hope as they understand only Nitish is capable of saving the situation in 2024,” he remarked. Similarly, state JD-U chief Umesh Kushwaha called Nitish a ‘yug purush,’ asserting that no leader could compete with Nitish, indirectly advocating for his projection as the PM nominee for the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Meanwhile, calendars with a slogan that the country should have a Nitish-like leader were also distributed among party leaders participating in the plenary session. Nitish’s Mahagathbandhan partner RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav had praised him in August, saying Nitish could emerge as a “strong candidate” for prime minister in 2024 if opposition parties agreed to consider him for the job.

“It signals that most of the Opposition parties recognise the larger challenge before the country — the hegemony of the BJP, where on the back of money, media, and (administrative) machinery power, they are determined to stamp out all diversity from the Indian society as well as from the political spectrum,” the RJD leader had said.

TWO days after the MCD poll results, the mood in the vanquished BJP camp on Friday appeared one of realism, a climb-down of sorts from the growing pitch for having the party councillor as the mayor.
State BJP chief Adesh Gupta said the top MCD post “belongs to AAP as the mandate is in their favour. 

The Delhi BJP said it would play the role of ‘strong opposition in the local body. Until yesterday, the dominant voice within the BJP camp was that the party would not hesitate to get the support of any councillor to keep the top post. Many party leaders cited the absence of anti-defection law in the MCD rulebook to strengthen their claim about councillor coming along and accepting the party mayor.

The saffron U-turn brought smiles back to the AAP camp. MCD in charge of AAP and Delhi MLA Durgesh Pathak called the BJP decision a good gesture. “The mandate is in AAP’s favour. The BJP has to sit in opposition. They should be a constructive opposition in MCD,”said Pathak.

On Friday, Gupta was circumspect. “The BJP will serve the people of Delhi by becoming a strong opposition and will expose corruption linked to AAP in the corporation in the way they did in the Delhi government,” he said.

He accused the Congress ofplaying a “friendly match” with the AAP in the MCD polls. Gupta referred to BJP increasing its vote percentage in the elections by 3% in comparison with the 2017 elections. “We
had a 36.08% vote share. This time, it has increased to 39.09%,” he said.

He said CM Kejriwal and AAP stood “exposed” due to JP’s anti-corruption campaign. “People have rejected AAP candidates in the assembly segment of Manish Sisodia. The situation was just the same in
the assembly constituency of incarcerated Delhi minister Satyendar Jain,” he said.

BJP leaders said that in many seats the party won by a small margin. He expressed his gratitude to the people of Delhi for showing respect for the services the party has rendered with dedication and  determination. “Compared to the last time, the only visible change is that the Congress has bowed before the AAP,” said a BJP leader.

NEW DELHI: Finally, what AAP thought happened, not in the exact measure, but in its historical proportion. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party ended the BJP’s 15-year rule over the MCD, bagging 134 of the 250 seats, forcing the BJP to settle at 104 and Congress at a distant 9 seats.

For AAP, it is a wish fulfilled: it now rules Delhi and the civic body whose unification from three separate bodies a few months back was thought to be a pro-BJP move.On Wednesday, the BJP could draw solace from a fragile fact: it has fared better than what was projected by exit polls. 

The results humiliated the Congress as it won only nine seats and, worse, 188 of its 247 candidates lost their deposits. An element of history joined AAP’s win. It is for the first time that the AAP has managed to wrest power from the BJP in any of the battles of the ballot since the party’s birth a decade ago.

AAP has won two other elections the Delhi Assembly (2015 & 2019) and Punjab (2022). In all these polls, AAP swept the Congress off, while it faced defeat in BJP-ruled states like Uttarakhand, Goa and Uttar Pradesh.

In Delhi, AAP singularly targeted the city’s ever-rising three landfill sites, promising to remove the muck and squalor from Delhi’s midst. The BJP got back at AAP by selectively leaking video clips on the so-called corruption cases, including the Delhi excise scam.

In the previous elections, the BJP had trounced both the AAP and the Congress by winning 181 of 272 wards of the three municipal corporations. Kejriwal termed the “decisive victory” to be an affirmation for his party’s honest politics. “People of Delhi have now entrusted their son to clean Delhi and rid MCD of corruption. I won’t let them down,” he said at the AAP headquarters.

Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta said the people have given them almost 40% vote share along with 104 wards and responsibility as a strong opposition. As for the dispirited Congress, it claimed that the people have rejected the BJP.

Mayor watch

Tenure of MCD mayor is 1 year

Rules mandate that the first mayor is a woman while the third mayor has to be from the reserved category

AAP may field SC woman councillor for mayor

If she wins, she’ll have tenure of about four months as new mayor is sworn in every April

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power in Gujarat since 1995, is aiming for a seventh straight term in the state.

All the exit polls have predicted a big majority for PM Modi’s party in Gujarat (with them winning 117-151 seats), while the Congress’ tally was predicted to fall to 16-51. New entrant Aam Aadmi Party’s campaign was projected by exit polls to be sound and fury signifying almost nothing — their tally was expected to be confined to between two to 13 seats.

Himachal Pradesh is expected to see a closer fight between the two main parties.

The state has not returned any incumbent government to power after 1985, but the ruling BJP, powered by PM Modi’s campaign, hopes to buck that trend. All but two exit polls have predicted an edge for them.

The saffron party has already returned to power in Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Assam, and Uttarakhand, and is now hoping to add Himachal, the home state of BJP national president JP Nadda, to that list.

A lot is at stake for the Congress too, with insiders saying that any hopes for the party’s revival has to start from Himachal. The grand old party is currently only in power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, both of which will go to polls in 2023.

NEW DELHI: Celebrations are in full swing at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) office here on Wednesday with supporters carrying party flags distributing sweets and dancing to the beat of drums.

The AAP crossed the halfway mark gaining a majority in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, thus uprooting the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 15-year-long rule in the city’s civic body.

Senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia thanked the people of Delhi for voting his party to victory in the MCD polls and said it was their mandate that helped it defeat the “world’s biggest and most negative party”.

Addressing the people around 3 pm, AAP’s national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said, “I congratulate the people of Delhi for this win and thank them for bringing change.”

As of 2 pm, the AAP has won 130 wards out of 250 so far.

The BJP, which has been ruling the civic body since 2007, managed to win 99 seats with the party leading on 6 seats till 2 pm.

The Congress was lagging far behind, winning just seven seats.

Three Independent candidates, including Shakeela Begum from Seelampur in northeast Delhi, have also won.

In a fiercely fought battle, the BJP began the day by leading in the initial trends for nearly one and a half hour initially, however, the trends started shifting as the AAP gained the lead and maintained thereafter until the final results were declared.

“The BJP has got the answer today that the people of Delhi vote for those who work, and not for the ones who defame. The BJP fielded its MPs, Ministers, CBI and ED, but the people of Delhi still voted for the AAP. The people have given a befitting reply to the BJP for the allegations that it levelled against Kejriwal. We will make Delhi the most beautiful city in the world,” AAP leader Raghav Chadha said earlier.

Polling took place on December 4 with about 50 per cent voter turnout.

This was the first civic election after the fresh delimitation exercise.

There were 272 wards in Delhi and three corporations – NDMC, SDMC, and EDMC in Delhi from 2012-2022 that later reunified into an MCD that had formally come into existence on May 22.

NEW DELHI: The BJP appears headed for a record victory in the Gujarat while the race in Himachal Pradesh could be unexpectedly tight, if the poll of exit polls is any indicator. Exit poll results came out in the evening after the last phase Gujarat Assembly elections ended on Monday.

Pollsters were unanimous in predicting a clean sweep for the BJP in Gujarat, with the Congress finishing a distant second. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could consider itself lucky if it crosses single digits. If the BJP wins, it would be a record seventh successive term for it in Gujarat. However, the Congress appears to have given the BJP a run for its money in Himachal Pradesh, exit polls suggest. Counting of votes will take place on December 8.

The poll of exit polls gave 132 seats to the BJP in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly with the Congress and its allies trailing at 38. If the projection holds, it would be a huge blow for the Congress, which secured 77 seats in the 2017 Assembly elections. Its lacklustre performance could affect its morale at a time when it is looking to build up some steam ahead of the 2024 general elections. Congress leaders had claimed the party will win despite its low key campaign in the state.

As for the AAP, its high voltage campaign may not have commensurate results on the ground in Gujarat, with BJP being the big beneficiary.In Himachal Pradesh, the BJP could get to retain power, through with a razor thin margin, as the poll of polls gave it 35 seats, which is also the majority mark in the 68-member Assembly. The Congress could end up with 30 seats while it will be a no-show for the AAP.

However, two exit polls showed a dead heat between the BJP and the Congress in the state, where results could go either way. According to the Chanakya exit poll, it will be a cliffhanger as both the BJP and the Congress may secure 33 seats each. The India-Today Axis poll gave the Congress an edge with 30-40 seats.

NEW DELHI: The residents of Northwest Delhi’s Jahangirpuri have cast their votes for peace, communal harmony and cleanliness in this Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections. 

The market area in Jahangirpuri which had come to a standstill in April due to clashes between two communities during a Hanuman Jayanti procession was bustling on Sunday as people went out in large numbers to exercise their franchise.

The clash that erupted on April 16 left eight police personnel and a local resident injured.

Although the situation returned to normalcy months ago, the security in the market area was slightly beefed up with the deployment of police and Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel every 200 metres.

Tajman Bibi, one of the Jahangirpuri voters, said he wants the upcoming MCD regime to focus on peace and communal harmony, which are his primary concerns.

“Jahangirpuri should never again witness the kind of violence it did in April. The authorities should focus on maintaining communal harmony in this area. While casting my vote, that was my only concern,” Tajman told PTI.

Another voter Rafiq echoed similar sentiments, saying that people in Jahangirpuri should not “face divisive politics” anymore.

“No matter which party comes to power in the MCD, we expect peace in Jahangirpuri. People should not face divisive politics here anymore. There should be harmony amongst all communities.”

“We do not want any sort of division on the basis of communities. We do not want people to fight amongst each other,” the 56-year-old added.

On the civic front, the residents highlighted the lack of cleanliness and garbage menace as other major issues.

Mohammad Junu,48, whose house is located in one of the congested gullies, said the drains in the area mostly remain clogged throughout the year.

“We have been facing the issue of clogged drains since several years now. We spoke to the authorities earlier many times but nobody paid heed to the issue. Due to water stagnation, drains get clogged here. This is one issue that leads to major health problems to the residents, including dengue and malaria,” he said.

A few days after the clash, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) launched an anti-encroachment drive in Jahangirpuri during which bulldozers razed several structures in the area.

The exercise continued for one-and-a-half hours even after a Supreme Court directive to stop it.

The civic polls, spanning 250 wards, was conducted on Sunday. The votes will be counted on December 7.

AHMEDABAD: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday cast his vote in Ahmedabad during polling for the second phase of Gujarat Assembly elections and appealed to people to strengthen the state’s “development model” by coming out to vote in large numbers

Shah, who represents Gandhinagar seat in the Lok Sabha, reached the Naranpura sub-zonal office polling booth here along with his family members including wife Sonalben Shah and son Jay Shah.

Talking to reporters after casting his vote, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader appealed to people to carry forward and strengthen Gujarat’s ‘development model’ through their votes.

“I urge all the voters, especially the first time voters, to exercise their franchise without fail to take ahead this two-and-a-half decades of journey of development, because Gujarat’s development is not limited to our state only. Gujarat’s development is a medium to bring development in the country,” Shah said.

The BJP has been in power in Gujarat for more than 25 years.

Shah said Gujarat’s development serves as the foundation for the development of the entire country.

The BJP leader said various achievements of the ‘Gujarat model’, such as high industrial investment, 100 per cent enrolment in schools, zero drop out and poverty alleviation schemes, have been attracting attention of the whole country.

“I urge the voters to come out in large numbers and vote for strengthening this development model,” said Shah.

Voting was underway on Monday for the second phase of polls in 93 out of the total 182 Assembly seats in Gujarat.

Earlier, polls in 89 Assembly seats were held on December 1. The counting of votes in all the seats will be taken up on December 8.

MUMBAI:  Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly winter session scheduled on December 19 in Nagpur, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis have decided to postpone cabinet expansion and begin allocations of state boards and corporations.

Shinde held a meeting with Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule, where they decided that rather than awaiting centre clearance for cabinet expansion, both the alliance partners can start allocations of state boards and corporations.

“The MLAs who supported Shinde in his revolt are desperate to get the ministerial hearth. Some of them have warned that if the cabinet is not expanded and if their names are not included, they may take a different call. The immediate issue before the CM is to pacify the disgruntled MLAs by allocations,” said a senior BJP leader who requested anonymity.  

The first cabinet expansion was carried out five months ago, however, majority of ministries are yet to be allocated. The chief minister and his deputy are burdened with the maximum portfolios. Besides, it also has an adverse cascading effect on the administration and implementation of government policies.

Meanwhile, the matter of disqualification of 16 MLAs including Shinde and prominent ministers are still pending in the Supreme Court. A negative result can jeopardise the government. Therefore, they are giving a lot of thought to delaying the expansions,” said a senior BJP leader who requested anonymity.

A source close to Shinde said that allocating the state boards with cabinet status will kill two birds with one stone. “The MLAs who were earlier demanding cream portfolios are now desperate and even ready to settle with boards. This will reduce competition. So later, it won’t be an issue for us to distribute the portfolios and expand the cabinet. This is a well-planned strategy,” he added.

BJP Maharashtra unit vice-president Prasad Lad has stoked another row over Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj after he made an inaccurate statement about the birthplace of the Maratha king. Lad, who is a close aide of state Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis, on Saturday said that Shivaji was born in Konkan while in fact he was born in Shivneri fort in Pune district. Prasad Lad made the error while addressing a gathering at the Konkan Mohatsav in Mumbai on Saturday.

Lad’s remark invited strong reactions from leaders across political parties in the estate. Later, he extended an apology and said, “I have huge respect for Shivaji. It came out while speaking about Shivaji and Konkan. Konkan was the work land of Shivaji and that is a fact we cannot deny,” he added.