Weekend Reads:
- With Manik Sarkar falling in Tripura, the Naga People’s Front being left behind in Nagaland and the Congress potentially being left out of power in Meghalaya, North East Today asks if 2018 marks the end of three mighty regimes in the North East?
- The Morung Express looks at the failure of the five women candidates in Nagaland, a state where no woman has ever been elected to the Assembly, and concludes by saying parties need to push for mandatory reservation.
- Shillong Times takes a look at how the National People’s Party managed to win big in the Garo Hills, but the Congress held on to its Meghalaya bastions everywhere else.
- “From the issues to pick up, including salaries being paid as per the 4th Pay Commission in the state when the country had moved onto the 7th, to targeting the youth, who are believed to have broken ranks with families to vote for it, and tapping into the RSS’s long-term Northeast agenda to setting in place its own base, the BJP has been at work since January 2016 to crack the citadel built by the Left over 25 years,” reports Esha Roy in the Indian Express on the BJP’s big win in Tripura.
- Ruhi Tewari and Pragya Kaushika in the Print write about the man being credited with building the saffron wave in Tripura, Sunil Deodhar.
- “The irony is that even as voters in the ‘mainland’ are realising there is a huge gap between what Narendra Modi promises and what he delivers, the northeastern region is saying its wants to try its luck with the BJP,” writes Siddharth Vardarajan in the Wire.
- “Amid the gloom and foreboding of doom, if some faces in Calcutta and the Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram were lighting up with the remains of a suppressed chuckle, the credit does not go to the merciless jokes but a humourless issue that has been vexing the Left for some time,” writes Devadeep Purohit in the Telegraph.
- Arun Janardhanan and Shaju Phillip in the Indian Express take a look at what the Tripura verdict might mean for the only surviving Communist government in India, in Kerala.
Scroll on the results
- All of the results: BJP wins in Tripura and Nagaland while Meghalaya still up for grabs.
- In Meghalaya’s fractured verdict, the emergence of one significant regional player, writes Arunabh Saikia.
- The BJP saw Tripura as a significant ideological battle to win, not just a game of numbers, writes Ipsita Chakravarty.
- Interview: Left must team with Congress (and others) to save democracy: Ajaz Ashraf speaks to the historian Sumanta Banerjee.
- ‘Kohima to Kutch’: BJP’s stunning expansion makes it the dominant player in North East, writes Rohan Venkataramakrishnan.
- BJP wins a majority in Tripura Assembly, even with a vote share near identical to the CPI(M)’s.
- Congress vote share in Nagaland drops to just 2% from a quarter in 2013.
- Tripura: BJP puts up its best show ever in Manik Sarkar’s stronghold, but it’s not enough.
- Awan Konyak loses after coming close to becoming Nagaland’s first female MLA.
- Meghalaya election results: Congress suffers major setback in coal mining hub Jaintia Hills.
- Tripura Assembly elections: Tribal outfit IPFT emerges a major player.
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