While the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been touted as the main reason for the BJP's rise in the northeast in the last four years, a former Congressman deserves credit for the groundwork behind it.
Himanta Biswa Sarma was a key minister in the Congress government of Tarun Gogoi in Assam, helping it win re-election in 2010. After falling out with Gogoi due to the the former chief minister promoting his son, he joined the BJP in 2015 and is a minister in the Sarbananda Sonowal government.
Since then, Sarma has played a major role behind the scenes in expanding the BJP's presence in the northeast, starting with Arunachal Pradesh in 2015 and then Assam, where the party won a majority in 2016.
Sarma is coordinator of the Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA), which was founded by the BJP in 2016 and has built networks with smaller parties in the region. These connections helped the BJP form the government in Manipur in 2017 despite the Congress securing more seats.
Sarma's networking could well prove decisive in Meghalaya and Nagaland, which look like giving fractured verdicts and where the party is contesting only a limited number of seats.
The BJP took potshots at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's decision to fly to Italy on March 1 to visit his grandmother. With the BJP surging ahead in counting on Saturday, Sarma declared that the Congress leader was in 'nursery' in terms of his political understanding, while BJP chief Amit Shah was a 'post-graduate'.
Sarma has a history with Gandhi. One of the main complaints Sarma made when leaving the Congress was that the Grand Old Party was not paying attention to critics of Gogoi. Sarma claimed that when he went to discuss political issues in Assam with Gandhi, the latter was more interested in playing with his dog!