© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Neiphiu Rio was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Nagaland for a record fifth term in Kohima on Tuesday. The state will have two deputy chief ministers, one each from alliance partners NDPP and BJP.
BJP-leader Y Patton was sworn in as deputy chief minister for the second consecutive term, while NDPP leader T R Zeliang also joined him in the same position.
The new state Cabinet has seven ministers from the NDPP and five from the BJP. Among them is the NDPP’s Salhoutuonuo Kruse, who will be the state’s first woman minister. The other ministers who were sworn in on Tuesday are G Kaito Aye, K G Kenye, Metsubo Jamir and C L John from the NDPP, and state party president Temjen Imna Along, Jacob Zhimomi, Paiwang Konyak, and P Bashangmonba Chang from the BJP.
With MLAs from nearly all the other parties wishing to extend support to the NDPP-BJP government, Rio may be heading Opposition-less government one more time.
In the recently concluded Assembly polls, the NDPP and the BJP were the only formal pre-poll alliance partners and had contested 40 and 20 seats, respectively. While the NDPP increased its tally from 17 in 2018 to 25 this time in the 60-member House, the BJP matched its 2018 number with 12 MLAs. Suggesting that the NDPP was going to leverage this increased seat count for a bigger say in the government formation process, NDPP general secretary Abu Metha had said last week that “the composition and the formation [of the government] needs to be looked at afresh and a new approach has to be made”.
New Deputy Chief Minister, 70-year-old T R Zeliang, is also a former CM. He became the CM in 2014 after the seat was vacated by Rio when the latter became a Lok Sabha MP. Both were part of the NPF then.
In 2018, he was the NPF’s primary face and the election became a battle of personalities between him as the NPF’s chief ministerial face and Rio as the NDPP’s. However, in 2022, Zeliang was one of the 21 NPF MLAs who jumped ship to join the NDPP and is now one of its most prominent faces.
Zeliang will be expected to be a buffer for the NDPP and Rio against Y Patton who became Deputy CM by being elected as the leader of the BJP legislature party again. There were murmurs of a rift between Patton and Rio when the former was relieved of the Home portfolio last year, following which he had made statements that President’s rule should be imposed in the state if a solution to the Naga political issue cannot be arrived at.
