GUWAHATI: The BJP national parliamentary board on Friday formally approved the joining of former Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) MP in the Rajya Sabha, Biswajit Daimary, in the saffron party ahead of the Assam assembly election due next April.
The meeting was held at the official residence of BJP national president JP Nadda in New Delhi and was attended by Union home minister Amit Shah, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Assam BJP president Ranjeet Kumar Dass and cabinet minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. “In today’s meeting, our national president JP Nadda gave the approval for Daimary’s joining in BJP. This approval was necessary because Daimary is a sitting MP in the Rajya Sabha,” said Sarma, after attending the meeting. Daimary had resigned from the post of working president of BPF recently.
Reiterating that the alliance with BPF is over, Sarma added that the issue was not discussed at all at the meeting. “Why will the BPF issue be discussed in the parliamentary board of BJP? When BJP is going to form the next government in BTC after this election (in December), where is the question of the alliance between the two parties in the 2021 assembly elections? BJP will contest all 12 assembly seats in Bodoland Territorial Region (spread over four districts) on its own. But our alliance with AGP will remain,” Sarma said.
He added, “Whatever I had announced yesterday in Guwahati on the fate of BPF stands.” On Thursday, Sarma had announced here that its five-year partnership with BPF will not be renewed on expiry of the term of the present alliance in January next, which means that the two allies will not fight the 2021 election as friends but as rivals.
Dass said the party’s national leadership was apprised of the situation in the Bodo heartland in the context of the coming council election.
Dass added, “We have told the party parliamentary board that BPF has lost the trust of people in BTR and BJP will win the election.”
The Assam BJP chief further said, “The central leadership of the party apparently is abolsutely convinced with our views and will be satisfied when the BTC results are declared.” In January, 2016, BJP had stitched a pre-poll alliance with BPF and AGP riding on which the saffron party formed its first government in the state.
The coalition was needed because BJP, though finishing as the single-largest party, was three seats short of the halfway mark of 63 in the 126-member house.