Shillong, Mar 16: National People’s Party (NPP) Chief and Meghalaya Chief Minister, Conrad K. Sangma on Wednesday announced that the NPP is open to joining the BJP government in Manipur if they are invited.
The BJP won 32 seats in the recently concluded elections for the 60-member Manipur Assembly, securing a full majority. The NPP, an ally of BJP in Manipur’s previous government and a member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), won seven seats in the Assembly elections.
“We are supporting the government at the Centre. We are supporting the government in Arunachal Pradesh and we are running the government in Meghalaya with BJP, of course, in Manipur, BJP has got the majority. The decision will be theirs but from the NPP side, we are very much open. If the invitation does come, then definitely we will consider joining the government. So we are open if they invite us. We will be happy to join the government. Elections are different, government formation is different,” Conrad said.
He also underscored that there is no question of a strained relationship between the NPP and the BJP, stating that the NPP has always fought elections on its own terms.
“Whether it is Manipur in this election or Manipur in the last election, whether it is Meghalaya election, Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland – in every election we have fought elections separately, we have never fought any elections with any political party, there was no alliance. Therefore, there is no question of strain or stress, these are the dynamics of politics and this is how things go and obviously we as a party would look at the interest of the NPP,” he said.
“Every single six coalition partners have supported us when we needed them. And they have stuck with the government and the MDA in difficult times. Therefore, it is the duty of the government and of the leadership to ensure we appreciate and ensure we fulfil the commitments that we have given to each one of them,” he added.
Meanwhile, the NPP national president said that the party had expected to cross the double-digit in Manipur but managed to get 7 seats and came second in 15 seats.
“In fact about 5 seats we lost by less than 300 votes so it was a very close call for us and if things would have been slightly better we would have crossed the double-digit mark. We also saw that NPP has emerged as the second largest party and we have increased our vote share from 5 percent to 17 percent which is a huge jump and reflect the kind of growth that the party is having,” he said adding “Having said that, yes, it did not go as what we planned but that is the nature of politics and we will see how things unfold in the next few days and accordingly we will decide how to move forward.”
