GUWAHATI: After expanding its footprint in the northeast over the past two years,
BJP is ready to lay the groundwork for the 2019 Lok
Sabha election in the region, where 25 seats are up for grabs. Only this time, the saffron party will put to use the North East Democratic Alliance (Neda) - a conglomerate of regional parties of the northeast - that it put together with a 'Congress-mukt northeast' agenda after its 2016 victory in
Assam.
BJP president Amit Shah is scheduled to address the leaders of the 13 regional parties from the eight northeastern states that constitute Neda at its third convention here on May 20. All Neda members, with the exception of the Mizo National Front, are in power in collaboration with BJP in their respective states. Congress-ruled Mizoram will go to the polls in December. "The four-year-old Narendra Modi government has done several times more work in the northeast than the
Congress had in 65 years," Shah said on Thursday, adding that BJP and its allies would capture power in all eight states.
"The meeting on May 20 will chalk out a detailed roadmap for BJP and its allies for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Amit Shah will give the necessary directions regarding preparations for the polls," president of the state unit of BJP, Ranjeet Dass, said.
In 2014, the
NDA had won 11 Lok Sabha seats in the northeast. BJP on its own had won seven in Assam and one in Arunachal Pradesh. Its allies Naga People's Front (NPF) and Sikkim Democratic Front had won a seat each.
NPF, however, left Neda after the Nagaland assembly election earlier this year, where it contested against BJP and its new ally Nationalist Democratic Democratic Party.
Neda's second conclave in Delhi in September last year - six months before elections in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya - had reiterated its objective of setting up a 'Congress-mukt northeast'. Shah, in his last visit to the state last month, set a target of 21 Lok Sabha seats for the party workers.