The United Democratic Party (UDP) of Meghalaya has pulled out of the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), a non-Congress platform of regional parties that the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam had formed in May 2016.
The UDP’s decision, announced on Wednesday, would however not impact the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government led by Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma’s National People’s Party (NPP) and of which the BJP is a constituent.
“We took the decision because of the insensitivity of the BJP leadership towards the sentiments of the people of the northeast in general and Meghalaya in particular. The BJP’s determination to implement the Citizenship Bill left us with no option,” UDP vice-president Allantry Franklin Dkhar told The Hindu from Shillong.
“In any case, the NEDA is not a political platform but a development platform that the BJP in Assam created for the regional parties. We found no reason to continue under this banner,” he said.
Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the convenor of NEDA, refrained from reacting.
Apart from the BJP, the NEDA now has nine regional parties as members.
The Naga People’s Front was the first to leave the platform after the BJP stitched an alliance with the newly-formed Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party for the February 2018 Assembly polls in Nagaland. Next to leave was the People’s Party of Arunachal, followed by the Asom Gana Parishad and the UDP.
