JDU plans to forge post-poll alliance in Nagaland | Nitish’s desire for making JDU a national party status awakens

January 20, 2023

As regional parties across India aim to get for themselves the national status, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) is reportedly taking steps in an attempt to make itself a national party before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This makes the three poll-bound North-Eastern states a great play field not only for Nitish but for Modi’s opposition leaders like Mamata.

 

Afaq Ahmad Khan, JDU’s national general secretary and in-charge of Northeast, told Hindustan Times that they will fight strongly in next month’s assembly elections in Nagaland; however, he said, a decision on the number of seats to contest would be taken after the state parliamentary board meeting.

 

According to Khan, the party will contest the elections in Nagaland on its own but post-poll alliances can be made with like-minded parties.

 

“JDU is not contesting elections for the first time in Nagaland. Even before this, in 2003, JDU had contested 13 seats and won three. At that time the party got 5.8 per cent votes,” he told HT.

 

It is to be noted that in the 2008 elections, JDU fielded candidates for three seats in Nagaland and faced defeat in all. It then contested three seats in 2013 and won one. After this, in 2018 i.e. the last assembly elections, JDU contested in 14 seats and won one seat securing 5.49 per cent vote share.

 

According to Sanjay Verma, JDU national secretary and former in-charge of Nagaland, in the last Nagaland assembly elections, they lost four seats by a very small margin.

 

“JDU will use people’s reverence for socialist leader Jai Prakash Narayan and Nitish Kumar’s good governance move to garner votes in the upcoming assembly elections,” he told HT.

 

According to Verma, Jai Prakash who had lived in Nagaland for three years and was instrumental in the signing of a peace accord between the Naga rebels and the army, his contribution is worth remembering.

 

Notably, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had attended the function organized on JP’s birth anniversary in Dimapur on October 11 last year. His party had been demanding at various forums that the decades-old Naga political issue should be resolved at the earliest.

 

Mokokchung Times

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