New Delhi: In an unusual move, the Union cabinet last week approved the Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes Bill, 2024. It empowered the census commissioner to notify the population of Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the state of Goa.
Political observers in the state saw the Centre’s March 7 directive as a move to mollify the STs of Goa who have been demanding reservation of seats for the community in the assembly. The hurry in which the Narendra Modi government passed the directive, at the fag end of its tenure, can be appreciated better if one recalls Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant’s statement in the state assembly last month. Sawant had told the House then that the reservation of assembly constituencies for STs would not be possible before the delimitation process expected countrywide in 2026.
However, with just days to go before the general elections are announced, the Centre made a sudden move on Goa. This matches the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s other recent express moves where there is a clear immediate political motive discernible, keeping the ruling party’s poll prospects in mind.
The BJP’s top leadership is focused on micro-managing Lok Sabha seats, one at a time. This approach of the party to utilise the Central government’s powers to add leverage to its 2024 prospects, in turn puts a question mark on the so-called invincibility of the ‘Modi factor’ on voters. Also, it calls to question how confident the party is of the Ayodhya issue, beyond the Hindi belt. At the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January, Modi pushed his way to play priest-king, casting all religious and secular convention aside.
The Goa directive
Chief minister Sawant’s February 11 statement in the Goa assembly, mentioned above, was in response to a calling-attention motion moved by the entire seven-member Opposition belonging to the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Revolutionary Goan Party and Goa Forward Party. For over a year, there has been a strident protest in Goa around this demand. Opposition parties have also joined the bandwagon, leaving Sawant a bit wary about his party’s prospects in meeting the target of winning both the Lok Sabha seats in the state in the coming polls.
Sawant also announced that day that he would visit New Delhi on February 16 to press the BJP leadership to grant the demand. As planned, he met Union home minister Amit Shah on February 19 in Delhi. Shah, without spelling out any deadline, promised to resolve the matter.
On February 24, Sawant met Shah again, this time with a sizeable delegation of leaders from the ST community. Once again, Shah assured them of an “early resolution”. These ST leaders had by then declared that they would boycott the 2024 elections if their demand was not met by the Centre.
As per the 2011 census, Goa’s ST population was at 10.23%, which in the last 13 years may have gone up. The ST population is a decisive factor in the South Goa Lok Sabha seat. In the 2019 polls, while the BJP succeeded in increasing its country-wide tally from the one in 2014, it couldn’t win in South Goa. Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Francisco Sardinha had won the seat by a slim margin.
The North Goa constituency, which the party won in 2019, also has significant numbers of ST voters.
As of now, the Centre’s decision has not been able to placate the agitation leaders. According to news reports, they have rejected the decision since it is still a promise.
Discontent aside, if we look at BJP’s poll strategies aimed particularly at smaller communities which can be the deciding factor in just a fraction of assembly or Lok Sabha seats, often the pattern is only to heap layer upon layer of promises to keep their hope tied to the party.
Be it the party’s promise since the 2014 general elections to the Matua voters of Bengal (by promising them first to pass the Citizenship Amendment Bill, and then to implement the Act), or to the Gorkha/Nepali community particularly influential in the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat (to grant them the Gorkhaland state), the pattern is all too palpable.
An agreement for one Lok Sabha seat in Tripura
One such new front, based on this strategy of promises to a smaller group just before an election, has now been opened in Tripura by the Modi regime. The Modi-era BJP, which is now openly majoritarian in its approach, has been pussy-footing the demand for Greater Tipraland by the state’s minority ST community for some time now.
But with the 2024 elections looming, the tribal party, Tipra Motha, which is now the largest opposition in the state and has been at the forefront of the demand, announced that its leader, the well-recognised ex-royal, Pradyut Debbarma, would embark on a fast unto death protest to seek fulfilment of the demand. The party also began hobnobbing with the state’s Opposition for a united fight in the 2024.
Like Goa, Tripura also has two Lok Sabha seats. While the state’s majority Bengali population is the deciding factor in the West Tripura constituency, the East Tripura seat is reserved for the ST community. In the 2019 general elections, BJP had cornered the seat (along with the West Tripura seat) on the basis of a verbal promise to the tribal leaders to look into the Tipraland demand. Lately though, the birth and meteoric rise of Tipra Motha which demanded no less than a written promise from the Modi-Shah regime on the community’s demand, made it an imperative for the BJP to bring it to its side, lest the seat be won by the opposition in 2024.
On March 2, another express decision was made by the Modi government. It entered into a written agreement with Tipra Motha to settle the community’s demand for constitutional protection. Though a written promise has allowed the Tipra Motha to go to the community as a winner, in effect, it is not too different from the Goa promise. Both the promises are just that – a mere promise to look into the demands sometime in the future. In other words, moves urgently made by the government keeping the party’s forthcoming electoral prospects in mind.
On March 8, while the BJP has declared former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb as its candidate from the West Tripura seat, it is yet to announce a candidate for the East Tripura seat – leaving political observers in the state to deduce that it would most likely be set aside for a consensus tribal candidate belonging to one of the parties aligned to the NDA including Tipra Motha.
Promises in Ladakh too?
The Modi-Shah regime is likely to try the Goa-Tripura strategy in Ladakh too, to be able to retain the lone Lok Sabha seat in the union territory (UT) in 2024.
Unrest in the UT has been simmering for some time now. Led by local hero and climate activist, Sonam Wangchuk, the inspiration for Aamir Khan’s character in 3 Idiots, people have been seeking inclusion of Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution to protect their land, culture and environment. Wangchuk is currently on a 21-day ‘climate’ fast.
On March 4, a delegation of Ladakhi leaders seeking constitutional protection and statehood to Ladakh met Amit Shah but the meeting was inconclusive.
Several rounds of shutdowns have paralysed life in Leh-Ladakh in the last few days.
As per reports, Shah is likely to visit Ladakh in the second half of March, and is likely to make “promises” to match the demands of the Ladakhis. Quoting “sources”, a March 2 report in the Deccan Herald said Shah is likely to announce “some parts of Sixth Schedule status to the region during his visit later this month”. The reference was to a report being readied by a high-powered committee set up by the Modi government to look into the matter.
The “sources” told the newspaper, “The visit (of Shah) could happen either before the imposition of Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by the Election Commission of India or during the poll campaign.”
In other words, like in the STs of Tripura and Goa, a promise is in the offing for the STs of Ladakh too before the Lok Sabha polls, clearly aiming at pocketing the lone Lok Sabha seat.
Promise in Gorkhaland too
When it comes to poll-bound promises, the Gorkhas/Nepalis of Darjeeling have to be appreciated the most, for their patience with the BJP. They have been continuously electing a BJP MP to the Lok Sabha from the Darjeeling seat since 2009. In 2014, hopes rose particularly high because the party, with Modi as the prime ministerial candidate, promised Gorkhaland in its manifesto.
However, with no promises fulfilled by the party even after ten years of Modi rule, the Darjeeling areas have been witnessing angry protests of late. Sensing the public mood, the BJP Darjeeling MLA Neeraj Zimba, on March 3, had written a letter with his blood to Modi, reminding him that he had said “dreams of the Gorkhas are my dreams”.
Modi, while speaking at a public rally in neighbouring Siliguri this March 7, once again promised to keep the party’s promise of Gorkhaland. Clearly, he is hoping that the patience of the Gorkhas can be tested in 2024 too for the party to retain the Darjeeling seat this time. Like in Goa and Tripura, this promise is also an open-ended one.
Amplified protest in Eastern Nagaland
At a time when the BJP has not hesitated to repeat its promises to sets of voters in order to keep their hope going, the party is not in any hurry to fulfil at least one promise its Union government had made to a group of people in the Northeast.
Nevertheless, since early this week, the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organization (ENPO), the outfit that has been spearheading the demand in six frontier districts of Nagaland for the Frontier Nagaland Territory (FNT), has declared a ‘public emergency’ and boycott of the 2024 elections. No political party is to be allowed to even campaign in these districts, till the Modi-Shah regime fulfil its promise made to ENPO to carve out FNT from Nagaland.
That promise had helped the BJP pocket several seats in the eastern Nagaland in the 2023 assembly polls, making it the second largest in the 60-member Nagaland assembly first ever.
However, with Nagaland having only one Lok Sabha seat, ENPO doesn’t have the necessary weight to drive the Modi government towards making any move in its favour in the run-up to the general elections.
Like in 2019, the BJP has already decided to put up a consensus NDA candidate for the Nagaland Lok Sabha seat.
