BJP, JD-U to join hands for Nagaland elections

New Delhi: Nagaland will be the first state where the BJP and JD(U) will join hands and contest the upcoming Assembly polls after the Nitish Kumar-led party join-ed the NDA in Bihar last year. Party chief and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar will campaign in the state ext-ensively where it has just one MLA in the current Assembly, sources said.

In Nagaland, the polling will be held on February 27 and the results would be out on March 3.

Mr Kumar, who will be in Delhi on January 27, would hold discussions with party members as well as former chief minister Neiphiu Rio, who has quit the Naga People’s Front and joined the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party Wednesday evening.

Mr Rio, who was being courted by both the BJP and the Congress, might be finally aligning with the NDA after meeting BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav, sources said.

“We are talking to both Mr Rio and the Naga Peo-ple’s Front, led by chief minister T.R. Zeliang. Alliance will be finalised on January 27 during Mr Kumar’s visit to the capital,” JD(U) national secretary general K.C. Tyagi told this newspaper.

Interestingly, this is the first election in which the BJP and JD(U) will fight together after the latter joined the NDA in Bihar in May last year, just before the presidential polls when the Opposition had come together and put up both presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In the last crucial Assembly polls in Gujarat, the JD(U) had put up nearly 100 candidates, but did not have any alliance with the BJP.

The announcement for the polls in Nagaland was made amidst a demand by tribal organisations and the civil society organisations for a solution to the vexed Naga political issue before the elections.