GUWAHATI: Assam chief minister
Himanta Biswa Sarma has over and over again proved to be BJP's man on the ground who toils to keep the
party flag flying in the northeast either through non-stop campaigning or by deft post-poll political maneuvers whenever required.
Sarma, who has established himself as the party's key man in the region, has been in the middle of hectic campaigning in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya.
After the end of campaigning in Tripura, where he worked the hardest, he shared his itinerary in the state on Twitter which said two road shows, 35 rallies in 33 constituencies covering a total distance of over 2,500 km.
And hours before Meghalaya's poll results threw up a hung assembly, Himanta had already set Plan B in motion. He met Meghalaya CM and NPP leader Conrad Sangma in Guwahati two days before the counting of votes and on Thursady evening the stage was was set for NDA rule again in the hill state.
Sarma can read the pulse of voters accurately and his prediction in any election in any state in the region has never failed him. Since the beginning he kept saying that NDA would return to power in all the three states and just two days ago he said the status quo would be maintained.
A former Congress leader, who joined BJP in 2016 just few months before Assam went to the polls, Sarma demolished the party with which he has been associated since 1996. Then came Arunachal Pradesh where he pulled off a political coup against Congress again, leading to an en masse merger of Congress MLAs first with a regional party and then joining BJP to form the government.
In 2017 in Manipur, it was Sarma who made the impossible possible by getting all non-Congress parties to form a coalition and denied Congress a government, which had ended as the single-largest party and in 2018 he was all over Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya.