DIMAPUR, April 7 – The Nationalist Democratic Movement—a state level political party of Nagaland, which bagged five seats by fielding only fourteen candidates in the recently-concluded polls for electing the House of the 10th State Legislative Assembly has termed it as a “strange election.” The party also alleged that money and muscle power was the dominant factor in the elections, besides involvement of undergrounds, directly resulting in the defeat of NDM candidates in different constituencies. NDM is the second political party besides Congress to come out with such comments and allegations of the involvement of underground groups in the elections concluded recently.
The party in a meeting held at Tourist Lodge here, organized to have soul-searching exercise and to review the recent elections has pledged to continue to assist in any possible manner towards solving the vexed Indo-Naga political problem and urged upon all underground factions to unite in the interest of the people.The meeting also resolved to urge the Leader of the present House to induct another two of its elected MLAs – Hukavi S Zhimomi and S Heno into the ministry.
It may be mentioned here that earlier two of its elected members out of the five were expelled from the party for defecting to Nagaland People’s Front (NPF) even before the swearing-in ceremony of the DAN ministry. resulting in the reducing of party strength to only three in the House of 60.
Although the party decided to support the formation of the DAN ministry under the leadership of Neiphiu Rio, only one MLA ET Ezung was inducted into the ministry and given a Cabinet rank portfolio of minister for Housing and Home Guards, leaving aside other two. The meeting also decided to write a letter to the Election Commission for recognition of NDM as it has fulfilled all the norms required by it.