Kohima, February 24 (MExN): Naga People’s Front (NPF) today accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using “churlish, unsavoury phrases and metaphors unbecoming of a national political party.”
A press release from NPF Press Bureau further claimed that in the fifteen years of alliance with the BJP, the NPF managed to contain the growth of its partner in Nagaland. In 2003, the BJP won 7 seats, in 2008 the number dwindled to 2, which was further reduced to 1 in 2013, it reminded.
“Parting of ways with the BJP has been seen by many party leaders as the best thing to have happened to the NPF. And now that the NDPP, in its attempt to snatch power by hook or by crook has opened the floodgates by offering 20 seats to the BJP, a culture foreign to the Naga society is threatening to inundate the Nagas’ way of life,” the press release stated.
“It is now the bounden duty of the NPF to protect the identity, traditions and culture of the Nagas, and it is our solemn promise to the Naga people that we shall do our best to safeguard our traditional ways of life.”
NPF further predicted that the alliance of the NDPP and BJP will be “very brief” since after the elections, Neiphiu Rio “would like to merge the BJP members, if any, with his party as is his wont.”
It reminded that in 2004, Rio got the BJP legislators to merge with the NPF. He repeated the same formula in 2008 too and shot off a letter to the leader of UPA Sonia Gandhi that he had “successfully uprooted BJP from Nagaland,” the NPF added.
