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Meet Himanta Biswa Sarma, the man behind BJP's turnaround in Northeast elections

With the BJP striking gold in the North-eastern states of Tripura and Nagaland along with making massive gains in vote share in Meghalaya, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the party’s Tripura in-charge, has maintained a 100 percent strike rate in NE elections.

March 03, 2018 / 12:23 IST
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BJP
BJP

With the BJP striking gold in the North-eastern states of Tripura and Nagaland along with making massive gains in vote share in Meghalaya, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the party’s Tripura in-charge, has maintained a 100 percent strike rate in NE elections.

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Himanta managed to break the entire top leadership of the Trinamool Congress and the Congress to bring them into the BJP fold. He then went on to build an Assam-style alliance with IPFT (Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura). With this alliance, the vote in the hills polarised in favour of the BJP.

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 While talking to News18, he said, “Look, we formed governments in Assam and Manipur coming from nowhere. Question is, who is occupying the opposition space? Our workers have worked tremendously on the ground. Party President Amit Shah’s decision to allow a merger of TMC with BJP has worked in our favour. There were a lot of party members who were against the prospects. Alliance with IPFT has worked in our favour and Amit Shah had a pivotal role to play in that.”
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At the age of 49, Assam’s minister of health, education and finance, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has certainly established his political footprint in the neighbouring poll-bound state of Tripura. Biswa Sarma had quit the Congress and joined the BJP in August 2015.

Track constituency-wise LIVE updates of Tripura assembly election Results