'Political solution' by year-end doubtful
Dimapur, May 11 (EMN): Speculations, and plenty of guesswork, are doing the rounds with regard to the yet unconfirmed possibility of the state government deciding to conduct elections to the state assembly this year.
Seemingly random set of events occurring lately have somehow come to give credence to such speculation. Firstly, it was the current ruling dispensation’s decision to shuffle the state government’s bureaucratic hierarchy recently.
For years, such abrupt bureaucratic reshuffles have been the trademark moves of almost all ruling dispensations to strengthen position prior to elections.
Conversely, the ruling NPF had on May 1 last approved the acquisition of Bolero vehicles for 23 of its various leaders. According to the order, 18 out of the 23 were to be brand new while the remaining 5 were classified as ‘2nd hand’.
There are also talks doing the rounds that huge orders numbering nearly 100 plus of 'second hand' Gypsy vehicles have been delivered to the party recently.
There were also reports of some politicians withdrawing a huge amount of money, in the range of Rs 40-50 crore, from one of the banks in Dimapur only recently.
The matter came to light when people trying to withdraw money were told that there was no cash at the bank. This, however, could not be ascertained from the bank officials when contacted.
There is also a flurry of activities like district tours and meetings that have started quite early compared to other years.
Eastern Mirror, in an attempt to clarify the matter, contacted at least two NPF officials. While politely refusing to comment on the matter, one of the officials suggested that officials from the state’s election department would be in a better position to explain the Constitutional provisions as well as ECI (Election Commission of India) standing rules.
The other source suggested that government lawyers could explain the matter better. But both the officials were of the view ‘lots of people are talking without knowing the legalities involved’.
Attempts to reach officials from the state elections department through the phone, for clarification, remained unfruitful.
However as mentioned clearly in Section 151(A)(a) of The Representation of the People Act , 1951, the conduct of bye-elections for the chief minister is unlikely because the remaining term is less than a year and the EC will not allow a bye-election in such cases as stated in the Act.
The State is actually slated to conduct the Assembly elections in early 2018 when the Assembly's current tenure ends.
Therefore the choice at hand for the government is to either elect a new leader of the House post August 2017, or else 'prepone' the elections, and the current movements by the party indicate the latter.
This also opens up another angle, that of the framework agreement of August 2015 and the supposed 'solution' by the end of the year, which now seems quite unlikely.
Moreover, in the recent NPF consultative meeting at Dimapur the Rajya Sabha MP K.G. Kenye had told the party workers that 'anything could happen' and had also said in the same meeting to be alert 'in the event of abrogation of ceasefire'.
So after 20 years of ceasefire agreement between the Government of India and the NSCN(IM) for a final solution to the Naga political issue, the actions of the ruling party in the State indicates that the solution is nowhere in sight and so instead it is gearing up for elections in a very big way.
