At a time when the BJP-NDPP (Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party) alliance is trying to woo Nagaland voters by asserting that they would surely form the next government, the ruling National People’s Party (NPF) threw a bombshell and sought to remind the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) what the alliance chief ministerial candidate Neiphiu Rio did to the saffron party in the past.
The NPF pointed out that Rio got the then seven BJP legislators in 2004 merged with the NPF and repeated the same formula in 2008 when the BJP had two legislators. In his euphoria, he also shot off a letter to United People’s Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi in 2008 that he had “successfully uprooted BJP from Nagaland,” NPF press bureau, central headquarters, said in a release on Saturday.
The NPF stated that Rio’s aspiration to become a Union Minister did not materialise as his 2008’s letter reached the hands of the BJP.
The NPF predicted that the NDPP-BJP alliance would be very brief as after the elections, Rio, presently the apple in the eyes of the BJP, would like to merge the BJP members, if any, with his party.
It is just possible, the BJP leaders are suffering a bout of collective amnesia or else they should remember his past deeds, the release said.
“And BJP, once uprooted from Nagaland, shall surely now find it hard to take roots in Nagaland again,” the NPF further reminded.
The ruling party went on to state that it had managed to contain the growth of the BJP in Nagaland in the 15 years of alliance with it. To substantiate its point, the NPF said in 2003, the BJP won 7 seats, in 2008 the number dwindled to 2 which was further reduced to 1 in 2013.
Maintaining that parting of ways with the BJP has been seen by many party leaders as the best thing to have happened to the NPF, the party said now with the NDPP, in its attempt to snatch power by hook or by crook, opening the floodgates by offering 20 seats to the BJP, a culture foreign to the Naga society is threatening to inundate the Nagas’ way of life.
The NPF felt that it is now its bounden duty to protect the identity, traditions and culture of the Nagas. The party made a solemn promise to the Naga people to do its best to safeguard the traditional ways of life of the Nagas.