The Bharatiya Janata Party has named a woman for the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Nagaland.
S. Phangnon Konyak is set to be the second woman to represent the State in Parliament after Rano M. Shaiza was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977.
But what has made her nomination significant is the Naga community she belongs to — Konyak. Fourteen of her tribesmen were killed in a botched ambush by an elite unit of the Army and subsequent violence on December 4 and 5, 2021.
A State party leader, though, said one should “not read much” into Ms. Konyak’s nomination. “She is a capable leader and got nominated for her loyalty to the party,” he said, declining to be quoted.
The BJP is a minor partner in the Opposition-less government in Nagaland. Its allies are the Naga People’s Front and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party.
4 RS nominees
Ms. Konyak was one of four Rajya Sabha nominees that the BJP announced on Friday. The others are Pabitra Margherita from Assam, Sikandar Kumar from Himachal Pradesh and Manik Saha from Tripura.
An actor and former president of the Jyoti Chitraban film studio in Guwahati, Mr. Margherita is a spokesperson of the BJP’s Assam unit. He was made the member-secretary of the State-Level Advisory Committee for student and youth welfare in November last year.
He has been nominated for one of the two Upper House seats from Assam to fall vacant. The BJP’s ally, United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) is expected to name a candidate for the second seat by Monday.
The BJP has 63 MLAs in the 126-member House while the UPPL has seven. Their ally Asom Gana Parishad has nine and supporter Bodoland People’s Front has three.
A Congress turncoat, Dr. Saha is a dental surgeon and the president of the BJP’s Tripura unit. He is also the president of the Tripura Cricket Association and plays an administrative role in two medical colleges — one government-run and the other government-aided.
The CPI(M) has nominated veteran MLA Bhanu Lal Saha for the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Tripura. He is a former Finance Minister and currently represents the Bishalgarh Assembly constituency.
The BJP and ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura have 40 MLAs. The CPI(M) has 16 in the Tripura Assembly.
