In Manipur, real game to start from March 11

On March 11, when the counting of votes is done, it will be known for certain if the ruling Congress in Manipur is able to keep the BJP onslaught at bay and prepare to take over the reins of government for a record fourth term. Though both the Congress and the BJP claim they will have the numbers to form the next government, given the polarisation of the electorate in the state today, the possibility of a hung Assembly is not at all remote. Speculation is, therefore, already rife that the real game of thrones will be after the election and not before it. The general consensus is that the Congress, though having to fight anti-incumbency sentiments, will have the edge. Chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh is confident his party will comfortably exceed the halfway mark on its own. As a team leader this may be expected rhetoric, but a look at where his optimism lies may throw interesting light.

Of the Manipur Assembly’s 60 seats, 40 are in the valley, 39 of which are general category, while one, Sekmai AC, is a reserved Scheduled Caste seat. The Congress calculation is that it will come very close to the majority mark in the valley itself. This optimism is fed by the polarisation due to the nearly four-month-old blockade by the United Naga Council, an organisation openly campaigning for the dismemberment of Manipur to facilitate the creation of a Greater Nagaland in line with the stated goal of the Naga militant group NSCN(I-M). This quite understandably is believed to have warmed up non-Naga voters, specially in the valley, towards the Congress. The UNC blockade began on November 1, in anticipation that the Manipur government was about to concede the long-standing demand for an upgrade of the SADAR (Selected Area Development and Administrative Region), a subdivision under Senapati district, and Jiribam in the Assam border, a subdivision under Imphal East district, to full-fledged districts. More than a month after the blockade began, on December 9, the Manipur government decided to disregard the UNC’s objections and created not two but seven districts by splitting seven existing districts. The UNC considers four of these districts to be part of the Naga homeland and stiffened its blockade stance. This is despite the fact that except for SADAR, which is a Kuki and Nepali-dominated area, the rest were not divided along demographic lines.

The Assembly and parliamentary constituencies were also left untouched by the splits. The remaining 20 seats are in the hills, 19 of which are reserved for Scheduled Tribes after Kangpokpi AC became dereserved to accommodate its sizeable Nepali population. Of these, 11 are generally considered Naga preserves. Despite having antagonised the UNC, the Congress still thinks it will win a fair share of the hill seats, including at least three from Naga strongholds. One, the Congress is quite deeply rooted in these constituencies, thanks to many towering veteran Naga and Kuki Congress leaders in the past. Two, the Congress may stand to benefit from the division of votes between its main rivals here, the BJP and the Naga People’s Front, NPF. The latter is originally a Nagaland party, but is now spreading its wings to the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur. The NPF, which shares the aspiration for a Greater Nagaland with the UNC and NSCN(I-M), is a partner of the BJP in Nagaland. In Manipur, however, the BJP has been cautious, as any overt alliance with the NPF can ruin its prospects in non-Naga constituencies and there have been no seat adjustments. Since both will be drawing from the anti-Congress segment in these constituencies, the Congress will stand to benefit.

In the 2012 Assembly election, the NPF fielded 12 candidates and returned four. This time the party set up 15, including four in traditional Kuki constituencies, and is thus set to hurt the BJP even in the constituencies it is unlikely to win. The NPF in Manipur has other worries too. The controversy over 33 per cent reservation for women in urban local bodies in Nagaland, and the way in which the NPF-led government in the state was shaken up, barely surviving after a desperate change of leadership, is bound to have an adverse effect on the morale of the party. The BJP’s prospects in the state is however far from finished. In the days remaining before the campaign ends, things can change dramatically, and high-profile campaigners, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be arriving in Imphal to try and win voters’ confidence, and also to make up for the party’s poor image of being helplessly left with an acute shortfall of leaders. Most front-runners of the party in the fray are defectors from other parties, particularly the Congress, and the party even at this stage has not been able to come up with a chief ministerial candidate.

But small and dependent Northeast states generally tend to gravitate towards the party in power at the Centre, and this will be the BJP’s trump card. This will be specially so if the electorate’s decision, as speculated, throws up a hung Assembly. In such an outcome, it is more than likely that the BJP will be in a commanding position even if it is not the single largest party. What then unfolds could be a repeat of what happened in Arunachal Pradesh. Of the smaller players, Irom Sharmila’s People’s Resurgence and Justice Alliance (PRJA), which managed to set up only five candidates, though unlikely to make a dent in the electoral arithmetic, is still creating ripples larger than its unpreparedness warrants. The defiant stand of the lady and her team is hailed among a significant section of the young as the herald of a new brand of refreshingly honest and courageous politics of the future.