Two Nagaland elections, months apart, and the Congress paradox

On June 4, the Congress rose from near oblivion in Nagaland to win the state’s only Lok Sabha seat. This was no mean feat as the last time the party won the Nagaland Lok Sabha seat was in 1999 and the state last elected a Congress MLA in 2013. Less than a month later, Nagaland elected members for its municipal corporations and town councils for the first time in 20 years and the results were very different, with the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) that governs Nagaland sweeping all three municipal councils. Its ally BJP finished second with 25 seats while the Congress won just seven seats.

The Congress’s performance in the long-pending civic polls makes its surprise win in the Lok Sabha elections even more remarkable. With its consistent decline in Nagaland, the Congress barely has any organisational strength in the state, to the extent that it struggles to field candidates for election. In 2018, it contested in only 18 out of 60 Assembly seats and won none. In last year’s Assembly elections, it contested 23 out of 60 seats, pulling a blank again.

These civic polls were no different and, fresh off its Lok Sabha victory, the Congress struggled once again and had only 40 candidates across the 278 municipal corporation and town council seats. Despite the far superior networks and organisational strength of the NDPP, which has 25 MLAs and won 153 seats in the civic polls, and the BJP, which has 12 MLAs and supported the NDPP’s Chumben Murry in the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress pulled off a victory in the parliamentary election with a 52.76% vote share.

Though the Congress continues to be in a difficult position in the state, its Lok Sabha win is largely being seen as a pushback against the strident Hindu