Arunachal's Political Equation Has Always Been Dictated by Party in the Centre

The BJP, led by Pema Khandu, bagged 46 of the 60 seats in Arunachal Pradesh's legislative assembly election.

On 2 June, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Arunachal Pradesh came to power for a third consecutive term and won the Legislative Assembly election for a second consecutive time, bagging 46 of the 60 seats.

Back in 2019, Chief Minister Pema Khandu led the saffron party to victory with 41 legislators. Before that, in 2016, as many as 43 of the 44 Congress MLAs shifted loyalties to the regional People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) before joining the BJP. This was the second time that the BJP had come to power in the state after former Chief Minister Gegong Apang defected to the party with his loyalists in 2003.

But it was only in 2019 that the party had been elected into power by winning 41 seats. This time around, it lived up to expectations that the BJP would be voted back into power, winning ten of them unopposed even before a single vote was cast.

The National People's Party, with five MLAs, three from the PPA, three independent candidates, and one from the Congress party rounded off the numbers.

Here, Jumping Ship is the Rule, not the Exception

Historically, the state’s political equation has been dictated by whichever party is in power in the Centre. Therefore, when the defections happened in 2016, it hardly came as a surprise. Even if MLAs are elected on the platform of other parties or as Independents, it is almost a foregone conclusion that they will eventually join the party in power in the Centre to contest the next round of elections.

This time, too, there were several such cases. In the Basar Assembly Constituency, Gokar Basar was the incumbent MLA who had won the seat from the NPP. But just a month before the election, he jumped ship to the BJP in hopes of securing a ticket.

However, when the list of the BJP candidates was announced, Basar woke up to a rude shock when he saw that instead of his name, it was Zilla Parishad chairperson Nyabi Jini Dirchi who had been fielded as the party’s candidate. The BJP’s gamble paid off as Dirchi won the seat.

While Basar had to be content with an NPP ticket, his former party president in the state, Mutchu Mithi, had better fortune as he was not only awarded the party ticket but also won unopposed from the Roing Constituency.

Apart from the NPP, Congress stalwarts such as Ninong Ering, Wanglin Lowangdong, and Lombo Tayeng had all joined the BJP before the elections. All three were amongst the last bastions of the Congress in the state along with former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki who contested for the Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat this time going up against Union Minister for Earth Science, Kiren Rijiju.

All three had been Congressmen for decades until the lure of the BJP became too strong to resist. Ering, in fact, happens to be the son of the late Daying Ering who was nominated as a Member of the Lok Sabha from the North East Frontier Agency (as the state was known) in 1963 and served as a minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet. All three had hoped to mark their return to the Legislative Assembly but Tayeng lost out to the PPA’s Oken Tayeng this time.

Is Party at the Centre the Only Deciding Factor?

In Arunachal Pradesh, it is difficult to pinpoint political fortunes on one factor alone. If the party in power at the Centre was the only deciding factor, then there was no reason for any of the BJP candidates to have lost the elections. But they did.

In the Yachuli constituency, the NCP’s Toko Tatung beat out the BJP’s sitting MLA Taba Tedir despite the constituency seeing visible infrastructural development and the fulfilment of the demand for a new district. However, a close and bitterly contested fight saw the NCP candidate edging out the might of the BJP.

In the Mebo constituency, where Lombo Tayeng fought on a BJP ticket, his victory should have been a given. Not only was he the incumbent, but he was only fighting from the platform of the party that was in power. Yet, he did not win. There was, of course, an anti-incumbency factor in the battle of the two Tayengs which did not factor in some of the other constituencies.

From once being a bastion of the Congress, the party managed to win just one seat with Kumar Waii securing the Bameng Assembly Constituency. Notably, Waii had served as the Home Minister under Khandu’s first stint before losing the 2019 election after being denied a BJP ticket following a rumoured fallout with him.

This time, however, Waii managed to beat out the BJP’s candidate Doba Lamnio to come out on top. He is the lone Congress MLA in the state. Speaking shortly after the announcement of the results on Sunday, Khandu said that the Congress has been uprooted from the state and that there is no place for the party in Arunachal Pradesh.

However, it is that one Congress MLA who might turn out to be the biggest thorn in Khandu’s side for the next five years. During the 2019 elections, Waii had said at a public rally that he was fighting for the chief minister’s post. It is no secret that he has his sights set on the highest political post in the state, and may go to extreme lengths to do so. Whether he would be willing to go to those extreme lengths depends on how much disposable cash he has to even think of engineering a coup.  

The results of the election showed that not even an incumbent MLA and a BJP ticket is a guarantee for victory.

The BJP has carried out visible infrastructural developmental work in close to a decade of its rule in the state, with the new commercial airport connecting the state capital to the national capital being the leading example. Road and telecommunication networks have also seen massive improvements under Khandu’s regime, though much needs to be done.

Despite these “achievements”, while no candidate or voter will go on record to admit to it, it is a known fact that the final deciding factor in an election in Arunachal Pradesh depends on how much hard cash one is willing to spend for votes. This is especially true for Legislative Assembly elections where in some constituencies less than ten thousand voters can elect an MLA. Even losing candidates sometimes end up spending anywhere between 20 to 30 crore.

In a state where development in infrastructure and social sectors has been slow for decades, there is little faith in political promises. For those on the margins of society who have struggled with political apathy, development comes only every five years in the form of hard cash.

While this practice may have been borne out of ignorance and a lack of political awareness, it has now become the norm. And when candidates strategise their next moves for elections, they aren’t thinking of policies, schemes, and/or ideologies. What’s foremost in their minds is calculating how much they would need to spend to buy votes to secure five years of cushy comforts. 

(Ranju Dodum is a journalist who writes about North East India. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)