Strange political logic

 Much political drama is being unfolded in Nagaland in the run up to the April 11 elections with two major political developments affecting the National People’s Party(NPP) and the Naga People’s Front(NPF). The first to hit the nascent NPP was over the issue of fielding a candidate for the 26 Aonglenden assembly by election. This decision has led to a conflict between the NPP against the ruling Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party(NDPP). Both are post-poll alliance partners under the Progressive Democratic Alliance(PDA). However after both NPP legislators switched sides to NDPP as a consequence of the party fielding a candidate against its own alliance candidate, the political arena now has pre-poll partners BJP and NDPP and post-poll partners JDU and an independent pitted against the conglomeration of NPF, Congress and NPP. There is perhaps more than the simple reason of NPP wanting to win another assembly seat to have decided to go against its alliance candidate, for the assembly bypoll and later for the lone Lok Sabha seat. The “merger” of both NPP legislators with the NDDP had its genesis when one of them went missing during government formation in order to escape having to align with NPF, the pre-poll alliance partner. The issue of legislators not following the party directive would be debated in the light of the Anti Defection Law 2003. However, the same law legitimises “merger” if not less than 2/3rd of the total strength of the party legislature switch sides. In this case, two out of two is more than the mandatory 2/3rd required. Under the Anti Defection Law, defection is defined as “to abandon a position or association, often to join an opposing group” which essentially describes a situation when a member of a particular party abandons his loyalty towards that party and provide his support (in the form of his vote or otherwise) to another party. While the former NPP legislators escaped attraction of provisions under the Anti Defection Law ; the principal opposition party, the Naga People’s Front(NPF) is facing a similar crisis when seven of its MLAs openly defied the party by extending support to ruling NDPP. Their justification for deciding to support the NDPP is debatable. The NPF legislators in their joint signed statement, appreciated the NDPP-PDA for bringing positive changes and restoration of good governance since it came to power in March 2018. By their own statement, the NPF legislators appear to indict themselves that they did badly when they ran the government from 2003 to 2018. Also, the NPF rebel MLAs also said that by not fielding a candidate and instead backing the Congress, it was against regionalism and for which they justified pledging their support to the PDA candidate. In principle, they will now be aligned with BJP much as the NPF will be aligned with Congress in the elections. The rebellions in NPP and NPF indicate a churning process. It may be recalled that on March 6,2019 eighteen NPF legislators had signed a letter addressed to legislature party leader T.R.Zeliang , seeking the formation of an all-regional government by aligning with the NDPP minus BJP, JDU etc. These pleas are good sounding clichés but never followed in practise and for which people know only too well that the loaves and fishes of office are the only common interests of every politician.