2024 LS polls: Winds of change in North East; Congress gains ground; new players emerge

As the dust settles on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it has become clear that some parts of the country are over the “Modi magic” and are willing to give the Opposition a chance. Among those is India’s North East, where the BJP and its allies have lost ground to the Congress in at least four states. Three news regional parties have emerged strongly in as many states, with two about to send their respective representatives to the Lok Sabha for the first time.

Together, these states have 25 Lok Sabha seats. In 2019, the BJP had bagged 14 of these in three states, while its allies had collected five. Together, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) tally stood at 19. This time, the BJP count has gone down to 12, while its NDA allies could manage three pushing the NDA tally down to 15.

The Congress, which had pocketed only four seats in the last polls, has managed seven this time — three in Assam (Dhubri, Nagaon, Jorhat); both seats in Manipur (Outer Manipur and Inner Manipur), one of the two in Meghalaya (Tura), and Nagaland’s only seat. Crucially, three of BJP’s regional allies — two of which are in power in their respective states — failed to win any seat on their home turfs.

Here is a brief account of who the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim voted for and what the implications are.

Assam (14 seats)

Assam is one of the states where the BJP has held on to its number of seats — nine — and so has the Congress — three. One seat each has been bagged by NDA constituents Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), taking the NDA’s total to 11.

However, that is not the complete picture. Election Commission data says that while the BJP’s vote share increased from 36.41 per cent in 2019 to 37.43 per cent in 2024, the NDA’s overall vote share marginally dipped by 0.45 per cent. The AGP’s vote share dropped from 8.31 per cent in 2019 to 6.46 per cent in 2024. The UPPL, on the other hand, won its first Lok Sabha seat in Kokrajhar with a 2.43 per cent vote share.

The Congress also gained in vote share — from 35.79 per cent in 2019 to 37.48 per cent in 2024.

The big shocker came for All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) founder and the state president of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, Badruddin Ajmal, in Dhubri, which he had represented for three straight terms. The influential businessman-cum-maulvi was defeated by the Congress’s Rakibul Hussain with the second-highest victory margin ever of 10.12 lakh.

The party, which had won as many as three Lok Sabha seats in 2014, had been restricted to Dhubri on the India-Bangladesh border in 2019. This time, it has got zero seats in its kitty and its vote share has dropped from 7.87 per cent to 3.13 per cent this time.

The AIUDF also failed to win the other Muslim-majority seat of Karimganj, where its candidate Shahabul Islam Chowdhury came a distant third after BJP’s Kripanath Mallah and Congress’s Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Chowdhury. Mallah won by 18,360 votes. What Shahabul essentially did was eat into the Congress candidate’s votes by bagging 29,205 of them.

In Nagaon, AIUDF candidate Aminul Islam played a similar role, though it could not prevent Congress’s sitting MP Pradyut Bordoloi from defeating BJP’s Suresh Borah by more than 2.1 lakh votes. AIUDF’s loss of vote share in the Muslim-majority seats such as Dhubri and Karimganj indicates a consolidation of minority votes towards the Congress in the state.

A significant win for the Congress was that of Gaurav Gogoi, deputy leader of the Congress in the previous Lok Sabha, in Jorhat. Gogoi had lost his parliamentary seat, Kaliabor, after delimitation in the state. He was pitted against BJP’s Topon Gogoi, and Gaurav scored a comprehensive win by over 1.4 lakh votes.

Another promising candidate, Lurinjyoti Gogoi of the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), a new party in the state, failed to defeat the BJP candidate, former chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, from Dibrugarh. But Lurinjyoti put up an impressive fight, bagging over 4 lakh votes. The AAP had also fielded a candidate from the seat, splitting up the secular and minority votes. However, Sonowal’s vote share was bigger than the combined shares of Lurinjyoti and AAP’s Manoj Dhanowar.

Like Dibrugarh, there were some other seats where INDIA bloc parties could have performed better had they fought unitedly. For instance, in Barpeta, INDIA bloc constituents Congress, CPM, and TMC fought separately, ending up behind AGP candidate Phani Bhushan Choudhury, who won the seat with over 8.6 lakh votes.

The BJP also managed to retain the Guwahati seat, though Congress candidate Mira Borthakur Goswami put up a formidable fight. She lost to BJP’s Bijuli Kalita Medhi by 2.5 lakh votes.

Arunachal Pradesh (2 seats)

Like in its simultaneous Assembly polls, Arunachal went with the saffron wave, picking BJP’s Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal West and state party chief Tapir Gao from Arunachal East, the same faces that represented the state in 2019. Rijiju was a minister in Modi 2.0 Cabinet.

Former state chief minister Nabam Tuki of the Congress was defeated by over 1 lakh votes in Arunachal West.

Meghalaya (2 seats)

Meghalaya threw up some interesting results. Conrad Sangma’s National People’s Party (NPP), which won the 2023 state polls, failed to retain the Tura seat, which is considered its bastion. Chief Minister Conrad Sangma’s sister and sitting MP Agatha Sangma lost Tura to the Congress’s Saleng Sangma by over 1 lakh votes.

Tura had been with Conrad’s family since 1977, barring a two-year phase from 1989-90. It was represented for many years by Conrad’s father and former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma — as a Congress, NCP, TMC, and NPP candidate. The seat has returned to the Congress for the first time since 1998.

Coming to the other Lok Sabha seat in the state, Shillong, it has been bagged by a new regional entity, Voice of the People Party (VPP). Led by Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit, former MLA and former president of the Hill State People Democratic Party, this party had made an entry before last year’s state polls, with a fight against corruption as its main poll plank.

State Congress chief Vincent Pala, who had held on to the Shillong seat since 2009, suffered a shock defeat to VPP’s Ricky Andrew Syngkon by 3.7 lakh votes, while NPP’s Ampareen Lyngdoh, a minister in the state government, came third.

Manipur (2 seats)

All eyes were on Manipur, a state that has been constantly in the news for about a year now for uncontrolled violence. While BJP’s RK Ranjan Singh was the winning candidate of the Inner Manipur seat in 2019, Lorho S Pfoze of the NDA ally Naga People’s Front had won the Outer Manipur seat. Both parties have lost this time to the Congress.

Inner Manipur largely constitutes the Meitei-dominated valley areas of Imphal. Congress candidate Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, a former professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, is a Meitei himself. He has wrested the seat from the BJP by more than 1 lakh votes.

The discontent against Narendra Modi — who did not even mention Manipur once — was evident in the tribal-dominated Outer Manipur too. NDA ally NPF lost the seat to Congress’s firebrand candidate Alfred Arthur by over 65,000 votes. Barring the anger against NDA, Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Manipur and his subsequent commencement of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from the state may have marked the return of the Congress in Manipur.

Nagaland (1 seat)

In Nagaland, too, the ruling Nationalist Democratic People’s Party (NDPP) — another NDA constituent — failed to retain the lone Lok Sabha seat in the state. It has returned to the Congress after 1999, with SS Jamir defeating Chumben Murry by nearly 51000 votes.

Political experts feel that the ethnic violence in Manipur, as well as the unresolved ethnic issues in Nagaland and Meghalaya, might have caused the electoral setbacks for the BJP in these states. Over 4 lakh voters in six districts had boycotted the polls in support of the demand for a separate state comprising these districts in the state’s eastern region.

Tripura (2 seats)

Tripura is the third northeastern state where the saffron wave has continued. While Kriti Devi Debbarman of the BJP won the Tripura East seat by a margin of 4.8 lakh votes, former chief minister Biplab Deb won Tripura West by 6.1 lakh votes.

Kriti, the sister of TIPRA Motha chief Pradyot Debbarma, was fielded by the BJP as part of an understanding with Debbarma regarding his demand for a separate state for the tribals of Tripura. The BJP had promised to look into the demand in exchange for his support in the Tripura East seat.

However, since the BJP has not achieved the majority mark on its own, what would happens to that statehood demand remains to be seen.

Mizoram (1 seat)

After coming to power in the state last year, the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) has continued its winning streak by bagging the state’s lone Lok Sabha seat. This will be the party’s debut in the Parliament, when winning candidate Richard Vanlalhmangaiha takes charge as MP.

Mizoram Chief Minister and ZPM chief Lalduhoma has already made it clear that his party would not be part of either the NDA or the INDIA bloc.

Sikkim (1 seat)

Another new regional party that continues to rise is the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) — an NDA constituent. The SKM has successfully retained the lone Sikkim Lok Sabha seat, with sitting MP Indra Hang Subba scoring a comprehensive win.

Interestingly, the candidate who came second was not from former CM Pawan Chamling’s Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF). It was Bharat Basnett of the Citizen Action Party-Sikkim. The SDF candidate came third, losing by over 87,000 votes to Subba.