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Political permutation in Nagaland has not been static but has shown frequent shifts through mergers (another name for defection) since 2003 and there likelihood of the syndrome manifesting in the coming days ahead. Presently, the major partner NDPP with 20 legislators heads the PDA alliance comprising of an independent and JD (U) along with 12 BJP legislators. The opposition NPF has 26 legislators but seven of them have been suspended and face disqualification proceedings for defying the party by supporting the ruling NDPP candidates for both the Lok Sabha election and assembly by-election. In practise, it means NPF has effectively 19 MLAs. In the post election scenario after results were declared, NPF led by former chief minister T.R. Zeliang hoped to rope in BJP to form the government even though BJP walked out of the DAN alliance and forged a pre-poll alliance with the newly formed NDPP led by Neiphiu Rio. Despite being the NDPP partner, there are speculations that BJP at the Centre would not be adverse to BJP-heading a coalition government in Nagaland. Such an event would be like an icing to the BJP since it would be a huge psychological boost in the North East. BJP heads a coalition government in Manipur, rules Arunachal Pradesh on its own and is a minor partner in Meghalaya while it is an important ally of the NDPP in Nagaland. To bolster its rank and discourage any power bid, NDPP engineered the merger of two NPP legislators to raise its tally to 19 (one sitting NDPP legislator passed away and the by-election was held on April 11). In politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Therefore, in case BJP would like to launch its mission Nagaland, it would have to consider its options. However, in theory, the BJP with 12 MLAs cannot replace NDPP and therefore, would have to look somewhere for support and that can only come from the NPF. In such a scenario, there are speculations that the party would have to woo at least 18 or all of 19 MLAs from the NPF out of 26. This is still speculative but nevertheless not far from reality. Political observers believe that the NPF is vulnerable to poaching from both NDPP and BJP. As of today, seven rebel NPF legislators have made it clear that they would join NDPP and to prevent that the party organisation has moved for their disqualification. On the other hand, the remaining 19 MLAs may not be averse to joining hands with BJP to edge out NDPP from power. No legislator would like to remain out of power especially after having to spend so much to get elected. According to observers, the fate of the seven rebel NPF legislators would depend on various factors unless they decide to resign from the house and face an early by-election. Either way, observers opine that NPF will be the favoured party to prey upon in the post-Lok Sabha poll scenario. The mandate in terms of numbers was won by NPF but in parliamentary democracy, the largest party or alliance gets to form the government and in this case, the NDPP with 18 MLAs tipped the scales with the support of 12 BJP and four MLAs (one JD-U, Independent and two NPP). The next few weeks will indicate what will be the permutation.<\/p>\n
Political shifts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}