Guiding BJP campaign before polls, steering it to govt now, Himanta Biswa Sarma is again man of the moment

After the elections concluded and, even before the results day, Sarma was at work, holding talks with both the TIPRA Morcha’s Pradyot Manikya Debbarma – who had expressed his disinterest in going with the BJP as it rejected his demand of Greater Tipraland — and National People’s Party (NPP) leader Conrad Sangma.

The NPP and BJP were allies in the outgoing Meghalaya government, with Conrad the CM. However, ties between the two were fractious, and they contested separately. During the campaign, there were heated exchanges after permission was denied for a rally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tura.

On Sunday, Sarma was in the national capital where he reportedly got the BJP national leadership’s go-ahead to do what is needed after the results.

A former Congress leader, Sarma has been indispensable to the BJP’s plans in the Northeast since crossing over in 2015, a point person for almost every political and administrative issue in the region. His decision to come down heavily on the drug menace in Assam is believed to have had a direct impact on the BJP’s prospects in Nagaland, and he was the “go-to person” for almost every party leader involved in the BJP campaign in the three states, party leaders said.

Sarma is also said to have zeroed in on Neiphiu Rio as the man to back in Nagaland, with Rio now set to become CM for the second time. In Tripura, while he had a key role in choosing Biplab Kumar Deb as CM after the party registered a historic win in Tripura in 2018, he was later instrumental in identifying the low-profile Manik Saha as his replacement.

The BJP has lately been trying to use Sarma in other states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat, where he was one of the star campaigners for the party, along with his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

BJP sources said Sarma was among those who pushed Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami to promise a Uniform Civil Code if voted to power, just ahead of the elections last year. The announcement is believed to have helped the party return to power.

Again, it was to Sarma-led Assam that the BJP had flown the Shiv Sena rebels, as part of its plans to topple the Maha Vikas Aghadi government and form the government in Maharashtra. Party leaders said Assam was chosen as BJP national leaders trusted Sarma and “had full confidence in his ability to shield the MLAs from any kind of manipulation by Opposition forces”.

An alleged similar attempt in Jharkhand had led to embarrassment for Sarma, after the West Bengal police arrested three Jharkhand Congress MLAs, who had just returned from Guwahati, with a huge amount of cash.

Sarma has cast himself fully in the BJP mould, leaving behind other leaders in some of his remarks, taking up hot-button issues, be it the Uniform Civil Code, population control, cattle slaughter, illegal immigration and bulldozing of “illegal” structures.