With less than a year to go for the next state assembly general elections in Nagaland, a lot of development is happening in the political landscape of the state, the most recent major development being 21 NPF MLAs joining the NDPP. With tremors of the development in Kohima being felt in Mokokchung, many observers are now cautiously looking at the prospect of BJP’s performance in the next election. As of today, NDPP now occupies 6 out of the 10 seats in the district while NPF has been reduced down to just 1.
Meanwhile, BJP in Mokokchung district is exuding confidence that the party will perform better than ever before in the district, perhaps winning more than half of the assembly constituency seats in the district if it were to contest in all ten. In the last assembly election in 2018, the BJP won two out of two seats that it had contested for. In 2023, the party is looking forward to improve on the tally with its district president openly saying that they are ready to contest in all the 10 assembly constituencies in the district.
In an exclusive conversation with Mokokchung Times at his party office chamber, the BJP Mokokchung district president Imolemba Jamir said that his party is ready to field candidates in all the 10 ‘mandals’ in the district if there was to be no “seat sharing” arrangement with its ally NDPP like the last time, and that his party would win a majority of the seats in the district. As per the seat sharing arrangement in the last election, he said that BJP contested in 2 ‘mandals’ in Mokokchung district and won both.
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In the state level, he said that his party won 12 seats out of the 20 it had contested in the last election. He expressed his personal opinion that the BJP better fight the next elections on their own terms, regardless of being in the ruling or in the opposition as an outcome, as it is not good “eating from the same plate” with others. He, however, said that the decision on seat sharing with NDPP will be decided by the party in time. Nonetheless, he made reference to the remarks made by BJP national vice president M Chuba Ao who recently reportedly hinted that there will be no seat sharing with NDPP in 2023. “When a national vice president says so, you have reasons to believe,” the district president said.
The BJP Mokokchung district president also said that his party in the district is strong and united, and that people in the district are now realizing that BJP government is a people oriented government. He cited that there were only about 20 schemes for the people in the previous Congress-led government but now there are more than 140 schemes for the people under the “Modi government.” Saying that his party already has an ongoing enrolment drive which began in October 2020, he added that the BJP has a network of workers in the district, mandal, unit, booth and page levels. Regretting that faith leaders have misunderstood the BJP, he said that the people in the grassroots now understand the party well and that “voters will vote for Modi.”
