Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee President Vincent H Pala alleged that the proposed One North East regional formation — reportedly involving the NPP, TIPRA Motha and others — is nothing more than a covert “RSS–BJP plan” engineered to fragment the anti-saffron electorate across the region. Further, Pala argued that the emerging front is being strategically crafted as a diversionary political vessel to prevent tribal voters, traditionally wary of the BJP, from consolidating behind the Congress or other Opposition platforms. Positioning the development as an orchestrated manoeuvre within the BJP’s larger expansionist calculus, Pala asserted that the new political “basket” is intended to siphon off discontented voters while ultimately aligning with the saffron establishment after the polls — a tactic he described as both deceptive and dangerous for the democratic mandate in the Northeast.
“This is a plan of the RSS and the BJP… they want to make another basket where anti-BJP elements will be put, so that they don’t go to Congress or other parties,” Pala said, suggesting that the BJP is acutely aware of its limitations among tribal communities and is therefore cultivating proxy political camps. He added, “……. they know that many of the people, the tribal people in Northeast — many of them, they don’t like BJP. So what they do, they make another baskets, the anti-BJP, they put into another basket so that they will not go anywhere.”
Recounting a recent encounter that he claimed has reinforced his suspicions, Pala alleged, “Why I’m saying so — I met a few of the leaders of the RSS and the BJP in the airport, then they’ve openly told this, that this is the plan of the BJP so that the anti-BJP will not go to a Congress, so wherever they go but after election, they will go and work with the BJP only.”
In a direct warning to voters across the Northeast, Pala further stated, “I’ll be happy if they have good intentions. But if you see who are there in the baskets, all our friends will be BJP only, all are ex-BJP friends. So definitely it is 100 percent a plan of the BJP. Knowingly and unknowingly, our friends will be in that plan.”
Cautioning the electorate against what he described as a political façade, Pala asserted, “So the people of Northeast will carefully see that what’s the difference between this basket and the BJP’s basket — there’s no difference. Once they were there and even now they are with the BJP. So, the people should be smarter than what they plant.”
He concluded his sharp political denunciation with a pointed appeal to voters to see through what he termed a “manufactured political construct” engineered to dilute the anti-BJP mandate ahead of the electoral battle.
