Sangma during the election campaign said, “The sad part is that in the past five years in many fronts we had to face huge challenges in the coalition and therefore we were not able to fulfil many commitments we made to the people. In the middle of the coalition, our MLAs had enough of the trouble and so they decided to come out of the coalition, it was only after I intervened and also some senior BJP leaders that our MLAs returned back.”
The NPP is going solo in this election. The NPP had complained to the Election Commission that its candidates were being threatened by militants.
NPP is contesting 39 of the total 60 seats. In 2017 assembly polls Congress emerged as the single largest party with 28 MLAs, Manipur assembly is 60-member assembly. Later around eight Congress MLAs left the party. BJP won 21 seats.
BJP got support from National People’s Party (NPP) and Naga Peoples Front (NPF) which won four seats each. One MLA each from Trinamool congress, Lok Jan Shakti party and lone independent member supported the government.
In 2020 three Manipur BJP MLAs joined Congress and four National People’s PartyNPP MLAs, an independent MLA and Trinamool Congress MLA withdrew support to the BJP led government and expressed desire to support congress. Following the intervention of BJP’s central leadership four NPP MLAs re-joined the government.
In 2020 N Biren Singh led BJP coalition in Manipur won the trust vote. Despite a three-line whip issued by the Congress, eight MLAs out of 24 congress MLAs abstained.
Six out eight congress MLAS who skipped the trust vote in the state assembly last year resigned from the assembly.
Meanwhile, the nomination paper of Lunkhopao Haokip NPP candidate from Chandel seat was rejected during scrutiny.
