With 6 seats in Manipur, JD(U) closer to national party status

The JD(U) has registered a strong presence in Manipur on its own once again, winning six seats, its highest ever tally in the northeastern state.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s party, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), may not have been able to make any impact in Uttar Pradesh, where its ally Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) did not give it any seat in the alliance, but it has registered a strong presence in far away Manipur on its own once again, winning six seats, its highest ever tally in the northeastern state.

Chief minster Nitish Kumar meets newly elected JD(U) MLAs from Manipur in Patna on Friday. (Santosh Kumar/HT Photo)

JD-U leaders say this is a big step forward towards its quest for national party status, which now requires just one more Manipur-like performance.

The party had last won a seat in Manipur assembly in 2000, but after that it drew a blank. This time, it fielded several sitting and former MLAs, who were denied seats by BJP and the Congress, on 38 seats in the 60-member House.

The first victory for JD-U came in Tipaimukh constituency in Churachandpur district, where its candidate Ngusanglur Sanate cornered a whopping 49% of the total votes polled and defeated BJP’s Chalton Lien Amo, who had come from the Congress, by over 1,249 votes.

Former Manipur police chief LM Khaute, who switched to JD-U after failing to get a ticket from BJP, won from Churachandpur by 642 votes. Md Ashabuddin, who won as an Independent in 2017 and contested this time on a JD-U ticket from Jiribam, won by 486 votes.

In Lilong, JD-U candidate Md Abdul Nasir won by 309 votes while from Thangmeiband seat, party’s Kh Joykishan Singh recorded an emphatic victory margin of 3,537 votes. T Arun Kumar of the JD-U won from Wangkhei Constituency by 613 votes. JD-U state unit president Hangkhanpao Taithul, however, lost to the BJP candidate.

On Friday, all the six newly elected JD-U legislators met chief minister Nitish Kumar, who felicitated them and said he hoped they would serve the people of Manipur with full devotion.

JD-U national president Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh said results in Manipur were on expected lines, as people of the state, despite a non-Hindi speaking area, had huge admiration for chief minister Nitish Kumar.

“We could see the attraction among people for Nitish brand of politics. In UP, we did not have organisational base as we did not contest in 2017, but we fought to create it and we will now have a platform for the 2024 parliamentary elections. We could have won one seat in UP also, but our candidate Dhananjay singh narrowly lost in the last two rounds to Samajwadi Party candidate,” he said, adding the party was now close to national party status and would achieve it in 2023 with elections scheduled for Meghalay and Nagaland, as it needs to get just 6% votes or three Assembly seats in one more state.

JD-U general secretary KC Tyagi said the party had done very well in Manipur, getting nearly 12% vote share, which takes it closer to the national party status.

The party already has presence in northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

In 2019, JD-U had won seven of the 15 seats it had contested in Arunachal Pradesh, becoming the second largest party behind the BJP. However, six of its MLAs switched over to the BJP later.

“JD-U is expanding its footprints and its acceptability is growing for the way Nitish Kumar has brought about a turnaround in Bihar from a situation of sheer hopelessness. We are not unduly worried about UP, as we could not focus much on it due to its local dynamics, but we have developed our base,” said Bihar’s information and public relations minister Sanjay Jha.

JD-U national general secretary and it’s northeast in-charge Afaque Ahmad Khan had earlier said he was confident that the party would win 5-10 seats.