Raining BJP all the way ! Scripting Congress Mukt

It is raining BJP all the way. At the time this commentary is being written down at 7.15 pm of March 10, the saffron party had already bagged 25 seats and was leading in 7 more. Now if the lead translates into wins, then the BJP would be sitting pretty with 32 MLAs in a House of 60, easily giving it the needed number to form the Government but falls far short of the 40 plus seats, trumpeted by Chief Minister N Biren Singh and State BJP president A Sharda in the run up to the Assembly elections. Falling far short of the trumpeted total of 20 seats is the NPP, which has so far bagged 6 seats and is leading in 2 other seats. So if the arithmetic works according to the current trend, then NPP will be home with 8 seats, which is four more than the previous show of 4 MLAs. The Naga People’s Front too has bettered on its previous show bagging five seats, which is one more than the 4 seats it bagged in the 2017 Assembly election. As expected it is the JD (U) which has been the pleasant package in the election, having already bagged 6 seats. This is the sunnier side of the election story and the ugly side is obviously the pathetic show of the Congress. Till the time this commentary is being penned down, the grand old party had bagged only five seats, a figure which looks like a joke when one recalls that it actually won 28 seats in the 2017 Assembly election. Down to five seats from the 42 it won in the 2012 Assembly seats and clearly the Congress is tottering and it is time for the grand old party of the country to seriously study whether it is in any way helping the BJP in scripting the Congress Mukt slogan and taking it to its logical conclusion. Just five seats so far-former Chief Minister O Ibobi (Thoubal AC), his son O Surjakumar (Khangabok AC), K Meghachandra (Wangkhem AC), Th Lokeshore (Khundrakpam AC), K Ranjit (Sugnu (AC)-and it is unlikely that the Congress would add to this total. Surprising it was but a number of heavyweights bit the dust in the Assembly including former Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam (Nungba AC), MPCC president N Loken (Nambol AC), TN Haokip (Saitu AC) and the fall of these heavy weights should just about reflect where the Congress actually stands today. The important question is whether Manipur can afford to have such a weak Congress.  
Not that the Congress did anything grand for Manipur in the long years it was in power here and in the country too. But with all the other political parties likely to sup with the BJP in the power sharing arrangement, Manipur actually needs a strong Opposition, but with just 5 MLAs this seems a bit far fetched. Coming behind the NPP, JD (U) and NPF, which have done much better than the Congress and it should be clear to all that nothing much was done to give more muscle to the sagging structure of the party in the five years it was out of power. True the mass scale desertion must have gone a long way in demoralising the rank and file of the Congress, but so pathetic is its position now, that the Congress could not even nominate ‘credible’ candidates in many Assembly Constituencies and in some it went ahead and named its nominees, under the belief that a candidate is better than drawing a blank in the list of candidates. Whether such a strategy would work for the party better in the long run or not is best left for time to tell, but already the Congress is not even a shadow of its earlier self. Time to sit down and seriously and honestly study where it went wrong and study how to set things right. Other than this, it would now be interesting to see if the BJP would go it alone if it crosses the magic figure of 30 seats or follow the NDA model at New Delhi and go along with the other political parties, with the larger objective of its Congress Mukt slogan. More interesting it would be to see if the Central leadership of the BJP would maintain the status quo or effect a change in leadership aka the Assam model. The coming days can only get more and more interesting.