Northeast elections: All you need to know about Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland

The BJP which has negligible presence in all the states, want to expand it's base says his plans are in place.

The three states in Northeast India will go to polls in February. Tripura assembly election will be held on 18 February, followed by Nagaland and Meghalaya on 27 February. Counting will be held on March 3. Each state has 60 assembly seats. Numerically, all the three states put together do not cross half the number of Uttar Pradesh. The incumbent assembly tenure in Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Tripura will end on March 6, 13 and 14 respectively.

The BJP which has a negligible presence in all the states, want to expand its base. says his plans are in place. Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam finance minister and the BJP's northeast strategist, has his plans ready for the northeast.

Himanta Biswa Sarma told NDTV, "We will have alliance with Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) and we will oust CPM. So we can see a BJP-led government in the state immediately after election."

"In Meghalaya though, the 48-year-old leader said, the BJP and its current partners will contest separately. "All partners will contest elections independently but we have decided for a post-poll alliance like in Manipur," he said.

"In Nagaland, where the BJP-backed, Naga People's Front-led Democratic Alliance is in power, Mr Sarma said his party's strategy is "stability, he added.

Tripura :

• The present House is the Eleventh Legislative Assembly where Ramendra Chandra Debnath is the current speaker of the House.
• The CPI(M)-led Left Front has been power in the state since 1993
• BJP has 7 MLAs in the assembly, also BJP is the main opposition party
• Manik Sarkar has been Chief Minister of Tripura since March 1998. He is a Politburo Member of Communist Party of India (Marxist). In March 2008, he was sworn in as leader of Left Front, the Tripura coalition government. In assembly elections held in 2013, he became the chief minister for the fourth consecutive time.
• Sarkar is the poorest Chief Ministers of India with lowest monetary resources

Meghalaya :

• The Meghalaya Legislative Assembly is a unicameral legislature in the government of the state of Meghalaya in India. Constituted as a directly elected body in 1972, it comprises 60 members.
• Women have outnumbered men, making up for 50.4 per cent of the registered voters in the final electoral rolls of the state
• Meghalaya, with a population of 3.2 million people, has a literacy rate of 74.4%, according to the official records of the state government
• Unlike Tripura, no one in Meghalaya registered for the third gender option in the final rolls
• The number of polling stations has been increased from 2,485 in 2013 to 3,082 this year, an increase of about 24 per cent
• Since its formation in 1970, the VVPAT machines will be implemented in Meghalaya for the first time, where the voters had been using the ballot paper-based method until now.

Nagaland:

• Nagaland Legislative Assembly is also a unicameral legislature
• Nagaland became a state of India on 1 December 1963 and after elections in January 1964, the first Nagaland Legislative Assembly was formed on 11 February 1964
• In 1974, the strength of the Legislative assembly was increased to the present strength of 60 members
• There is no nominated member of the House, all the members are elected on the basis of an adult franchise from single-seat constituencies.
• , Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the assembly election in the state will be held on schedule amidst a demand by the state's civil society groups for deferring the polls to facilitate a solution to the vexed Naga insurgency issue.
• The expectations for a lasting peace have soared in Nagaland, which had been hit by insurgency for decades after the Centre and the NSCN-IM signed a framework agreement in 2015.

(With agency inputs)