NPF tirade against NDPP-BJP alliance

NPF continued with its diatribe against its political friend-turned-foe BJP with the latest being a charge that it used “churlish, unsavoury phrases and metaphors unbecoming of a national political party” as it (BJP) faces defeat in the ensuing Assembly election. 

A press communiqué issued by NPF’s press bureau on Saturday, maintained that BJP was being targeted by almost all sections of the society, including the church, political parties and others, for which it was disconsolate. Claiming that in the 15 years of its alliance it managed to contain the growth of its partner in Nagaland, NPF pointed out that BJP won seven seats in 2003, which came down to two in 2008, before being left with just one seat in 2013.

NPF further reiterated that parting of ways with BJP widely welcomed by many party leaders as the best thing to have happened to NPF. However, with NDPP, in its bid to snatch power by “hook or by crook” had opened the floodgates by offering 20 seats to BJP, whose alien culture was threatening to inundate the Nagas’ way of life, it alleged.

Stating that it was now its bounden duty to protect the identity, tradition and culture of Nagas, NPF promised that it would do its best to safeguard “our traditional ways of life”.

The party further predicted that the BJP-NDPP alliance would be very brief as the regional party’s supremo Neiphiu Rio would invariably prey on BJP members and make them join his party after the election. 

Alleging that BJP leaders were suffering from a bout of “collective amnesia”, NPF reminded them that Rio got BJP legislators to merge with NPF in 2004 and repeated the same formula in 2008. The party recalled Rio had even shot off a letter to UPA leader Sonia Gandhi boasting that he had “successfully uprooted BJP from Nagaland”. However, that letter fell in the hands of BJP leaders, which ultimately affected his political ambition as he was not included in the Union Cabinet in 2014.

NPF added that BJP, “once uprooted” from Nagaland, would find it really hard to take roots in the State again.