Our Correspondent
Kohima, May 18 (EMN): Following the political developments in Karnataka and successive reactions in several other states including Goa, Bihar, Manipur and Meghalaya, the ripples appear to have reached Nagaland as well with former chief minister and present opposition leader TR Zeliang of the Naga People’s Front (NPF) stating Friday that his party would stake claim to form government in the state. Zeliang took to social networking site, Twitter, to announce this.
“The NPF party will stake claim before the governor to form the government on the merit of our case as being the single largest party. Why should different laws be applied in different states on a same matter?” the leader of opposition tweeted on Friday afternoon. He expressed that after the development in Karnataka and subsequent logical questions raised by the single largest party in the states of Bihar, Goa and Manipur, it was time to ‘query on the integrity of the Raj Bhavan’ in the states.
Stating that the NPF alone had secured 26 seats in the 2018 state assembly elections, Zeliang questioned why the NPF was not accorded the same privilege (as in Karnataka) and invited to form government or given 15 days’ time to prove majority in the floor of the House.
When contacted, Zeliang, who is currently in Tuensang to campaign for NPF’s Lok Sabha by-election candidate C Apok Jamir, said he would be returning to the state capital Kohima on Saturday, following which, the party legislators along with party organisation will ‘immediately’ hold a consultative meeting to ‘take stock of the situation’.
A communiqué from the ‘information & publicity wing, office of the leader of opposition’ stated that in Karnataka, the BJP without having the magic figure was being allowed to form the government in the name of ‘single largest party’ whereas in Nagaland the NPF was not allowed to do so.
“With 26 members, it (NPF) was the single largest party in Nagaland but it was not accorded the same privilege which the BJP led by BS Yeddyurappa is being given in Karnataka on account of being the single largest party,” the release stated.
