Guwahati: With an eye on consolidating the NDA in Assam before the April 9 polls, the BJP on Tuesday brought back Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) into its fold after five years and firmed up seat-sharing with AGP, even as its current partner in govt, Bodoland-based United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), left the NDA earlier in the day, citing ideological differences.Under the new arrangement, BJP will contest 89 seats, AGP 26, and BPF 11 in the 126-member assembly.BPF’s 11 seats are confined to five Bodoland districts having 15 seats, while the BJP will contest in the remaining four.Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said BJP has firmed up the seat-sharing pact with AGP and BPF in New Delhi after rounds of discussions led by BJP’s national president Nitin Navin“The preliminary discussions of candidates ended today. Tomorrow evening BJP’s central parliamentary board will meet to give the final approval, and we are looking at announcing the full list tomorrow evening or Thursday morning,” Sarma said.Sarma said the alliance will bring in “a lot of new faces, including women and youth, to ensure wider representation.” He clarified that two to three sitting MLAs will not get tickets, not due to performance but because of delimitation changes.UPPL, which had won seven seats in Bodo areas in 2021, announced it will go solo this time, fielding candidates across all 21 constituencies in the Bodoland Territorial Region.UPPL’s exit, however, is a setback in the Bodoland region, where the party had won seven seats in 2021 and played a key role in government formation along with AGP as BJP did not get the required numbers on its own. In 2021, BPF had won three seats and AGP nine.UPPL vice president Dr RN Sinha confirmed in Kokrajhar that the party will contest independently, fielding candidates across all 21 seats, including 15 constituencies in BTR.“The party’s first list of seven candidates has been released, and it includes president Pramod Boro, who will contest from Tamulpur,” Sinha said. Boro, notably, was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha earlier as an NDA candidate.The BJP’s move to bring BPF back into the NDA fold after five years is seen as a counterbalance to UPPL’s departure. BPF, once a dominant force in Bodoland politics, had drifted away from NDA but now returns to the coalition, giving BJP a foothold in the same region where UPPL is set to go solo.Five years back BJP had dumped BPF for the then newly born United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), making the alliance come a full circle.The twin developments — UPPL’s exit and NDA’s cemented alliance — mark a decisive shift in Assam’s pre-poll landscape.
