GUWAHATI: As speculated, 33 of the 43 People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) MLAs, including suspended Chief Minister Pema Khandu, defected to BJP on Saturday, which effectively made it a saffron party government.
This is the second BJP government in Northeast after the one in Assam. The development came two days after Khandu and six PPA MLAs were suspended by party leadership for alleged anti-party activities, followed by the suspension of 12 more party MLAs on Saturday morning.
The defection of the 33 PPA MLAs took BJP’s tally to 45 in a House of 60. Two Independent MLAs are also extending their support to Khandu and BJP. PPA is now left with just 10 MLAs while the Congress, which ruled Arunachal for most part, has three MLAs.
“We had submitted a list of the names of 33 MLAs, including that of mine, to the Speaker for merger with BJP and the Speaker accepted it,” Khandu told the media in Itanagar.
“Thus, it becomes a full-fledged BJP government. We all will work for stability and development of the State,” he asserted.
Asked about the reason of their en bloc defection, Khandu said, “We were ill-treated. As such, we had no option but to join BJP”.
The PPA has not yet spelt out its next move but it might move Governor (acting) V Shanmuganathan seeking his intervention. There is also a possibility that the party will challenge the merger and suspended Khandu’s continuance as chief minister in court.
“We’ll do what we should. Right now, we will not say anything. We will see. We gave them enough warnings and also suspended a few of them but they kept violating party diktats,” PPA chairman Kamen Ringu told Express. On Friday, he had accused Khandu and the other suspended MLAs of working against the interests of PPA.
The BJP said Khandu would continue as the CM. “It will be a strong BJP government now,” the party’s Arunachal unit president Tapir Gao said.
Much before its Assam feat in May this year, the BJP had set its sights on the politically-fragile Arunachal. The party has been upfront, albeit behind the curtain, in the political unrest of the State in the past two years. During the power struggle between former CMs Nabam Tuki and the late Kalikho Pul, the Congress had accused the BJP of toppling the Tuki government by engineering dissidence within the grand old party.
In a State that has a history of political upheavals, speculations were rife the PPA MLAs’ defection to the BJP was only a matter of time. So, the development has not come as a surprise to many. For years now, horse-trading wrangling for power and political instability has been part of real politic in Arunachal.
From the times of the State’s longest-serving Chief Minister Gegong Apang, to the late Jarbom Gamlin and to Pema Khandu, most CMs had to battle with contenders. Leaving aside Apang who had served for nearly 23 years – 18 of them on the trot – there has been, on an average, a change of the CM every two years.
A Union territory till February 20, 1987 but its legislature coming into existence in 1975 with Prem Khandu Thungan assuming the charge of the first CM, Arunachal so far has seen 11 CMs and two President's rule with the last being imposed from January 27 to February 19, 2016.