Speculations of any possible outcomes of the just concluded elections to the 10th Manipur Legislative Assembly are prohibited by the Election Commission of India, ECI, in order to ensure voters in states where the elections are being held later are not swayed by what they see as a trend. Broad pictures of what may be the likely scenario after the results are declared should however do no harm in this regards provided these pictures do not speculate on which party is generally favourably inclined to the dominant public mood. We are interested in sketching such a party-neutral picture, not so much to anticipate which party is likely to come to power, but as a caution of what troubles may lay ahead. The election office in the state is in a rather upbeat mood, considering the polls went off with much less violence than initially anticipated. In the valley districts, because of unprecedented security measures, the polling day was peaceful except for some minor skirmishes. In the hill districts, because of the much larger area spread (nearly ten times the valley), security understandably could not have been as tight, and therefore the reports of disruptions of the election process at many places. As the latest information from the election office goes, there will be repoll in 34 polling stations in the five hill districts on February 4. This time, the security personnel engaged in election duty in the valley districts being now free, they should all be available for providing much tighter security to the 34 stations. Hopefully all will go well, and voters will be allowed to exercise their free will in selecting their leaders.
But election trouble can hardly be said to be over. The Congress which went to the elections as the ruling party was the only one to field candidates in all the 60 seats of the Assembly in the state. According to the chief minister, Okram Ibobi, whose comments appeared repeatedly in the media in the run up to the election, the party would return at least 35 MLAs. The only other party to somewhat rival this optimism is the new entrant, Trinamool Congress, which fielded 47 candidates making it the party with the second largest number of candidates in the fray. The CPI which was a ruling ally has put up 24 candidates and this is the third largest number. The three are also not in any pre-poll alliance. The rest of the parties are way behind in terms of number of candidates fielded. But they have managed to reach some degree of pre-poll partnerships. As to whether these alliances will be able to hold once the election results are known is another story. The larger of the alliances, is the Peoples’ Democratic Front, but even together their number of fielded candidates total only 45. The other alliance is between the BJP and the MPP, and they too together tally only 33. The MPP, once a formidable pole in any electoral equation in the state, having emerged from the popular agitation for full statehood for Manipur in the 1970s, is today only a shadow of its former self, thanks to unimaginative leadership and greedy, disloyal political turncoats in its ranks.
Under normal circumstances there would have been no cause for extra concern, but as we all know, the Congress is being opposed openly by a united committee of a number of militants groups, CorCom, in the valley, and also in an undeclared but nonetheless with bare fangs in the hills by another underground group. This being the case, if any single party, in this case the ruling Congress, is able to come out with a clear majority, the issue would not be too complicated. However, if the Congress miss the magic number of 31 to become a single party majority, it is unlikely the CorCom would not step in to ensure no other smaller parties lend support to the Congress. They would also likely nudge the smaller parties to form a post-poll alliance and come to power. That is, if the Congress fails to reach the absolute majority figure even if by a small margin, they would not have it easy to muster the required number. But, as the pre-poll partnerships are indicating, there are some parties which are going it alone. The case of the CPI is interesting, as they were an ally of the Congress in the last government, and since they cannot hope to come out with a majority on their own ever, perhaps they are already anticipating a piggy back ride on the Congress and be a strange bedfellow of convenience yet again. Whatever it is, a hung Assembly will spell much more than the difficulty of forming a government because of the low ceiling on the cabinet size imposed by the Anti Defection Law, thereby the paucity of ministerial chairs to offer and lure potential partners.