The Hindu : Apang joins BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 31, 2003

National

National

Apang joins BJP

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 30. The Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Gegong Apang, today formally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party here at the party headquarters. The Minister of State for Home Affairs, Swami Chinmayanand, the BJP in-charge for the North-East, Pyarelal Khandelwal, and the BJP general secretary, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, were present.

In Meghalaya, the party has finalised the name of its candidate, Jopsimon Phanbuh, who will contest the Assembly by-election for Laban constituency.

Taking stock of the "progress'' made by the BJP in the North-East, where its presence was negligible till a few years ago, the party spokesperson, Prakash Javadekar, said the party now had 57 MLAs in eight States of the North-East, including Assam. While in Arunachal Pradesh the party now had a majority Government — after 36 MLAs of the State elected on the Congress ticket defected to the BJP — in Nagaland, the party was a coalition partner. Even in Mizoram and Sikkim, the regional parties ruling there were supporters of the National Democratic Alliance Government at the Centre, Mr. Javadekar said.

In yet another case of defection, the party here said that five members of the North Kachar Autonomy Council in Assam had defected from the Congress to the BJP. In Assam, the BJP has about a dozen MLAs. The party feels that the good intentions of the Vajpayee Government and its policy of trying to bring the North-East into the mainstream of development were paying off. The earlier antipathy towards the BJP felt by the people of the region, where Christianity is one of the dominant religions, is no longer a major negative factor for the party. Swami Chinmayanand said that a special meeting would be held in the State capital of Arunachal Pradesh, Itanagar, on September 26 and 27 to consider specific development programmes for the entire region.

Meanwhile, the party has advanced its meetings of the core groups related to the four crucial Assembly elections later this year. Mr. Javadekar said it was felt that it would be better to hold the meetings ahead of the central office bearers' meeting in Bangalore on September 10. In view of this, the meetings on strategy for the four States — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Delhi — will be held here on September 5 and 8 instead of September 11 and 12 as earlier planned.

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