This is the downside of heading a coalition Government. Not exactly a crisis, but this may be the first rumble to the BJP led coalition Government and while there has been no official announcement on why he tendered his resignation from the Council of Ministers, the decision of Health and Family Welfare Minister L Jayantakumar to submit his resignation letter to Chief Minister N Biren is a reflection of the tough balancing act that the BJP, more particularly the Chief Minister, has to strike in the days ahead. The reason could be anything but it is not surprising to see that the resignation of the Minister has become one of the major news in the last two/three days. This obviously can be taken as the action of an individual member of the NPP and not the party as a whole, but the new development is significant politically. Can one take the BJP led coalition Government as a rag tag army which have come together with only the sole objective of displacing the Congress ? Remember it was not the BJP which emerged the single largest party after the Assembly election but the Congress with 28 MLAs, whittled down to 27 after one of its MLAs defected to the BJP led coalition. The BJP on the other hand had 21 MLAs and it managed to cobble up the required number by tying up with the NPP (four MLAs), NPF (four MLAs), AITC (one MLA), one Independent MLA, one LJP MLA and the Congress MLA who defected to the BJP led coalition.
The resignation drama or crisis, whichever way one looks at it, may just subside after a few days but already an important point has been delivered and that is, the BJP has to walk cautiously in the remaining five years. All the more reason why the saffron party has to put its best foot forward ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Simple calculations say that as long as the BJP is in power at New Delhi, the BJP led coalition may not have much to worry here, for remember the Delhi effect has always had a profound impact here and elsewhere too. It was this Delhi effect which saw the BJP rise to such heights in the just held Assembly election here. However the State BJP would not exactly want to survive on the Delhi effect for long. As observed earlier here, the honeymoon is now over and the BJP will have to deal with the task of leading a group of different political parties, which may not always see eye to eye with each other. The task of leading a coalition Government will not always be easy and a lot will depend on the political acumen of the man at the helm in the person of Chief Minister N Biren Singh.
Source: The Sangai Express
