In the 2013 Assembly polls, the BJP won a grand total of one seat in the three states of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura put together. That one seat was in Nagaland.
Cue to counting day for the 2018 Assembly polls. By 10.30am on Saturday, the BJP and its ally, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), were leading in 32 seats of the 60-member Assembly. If the trends hold, it will mean that the 25-year regime of the CPI(M) has been ended by a party that had secured only 1.5 per cent votes in 2013.
While the BJP took a lead role in Tripura, capitalising on its outreach among Bengali-speaking voters, in Nagaland and Meghalaya, the party proved more adept at playing a junior partner to allies.
Even as the Narendra Modi government signed the Naga Accords in 2015, the party started wooing veteran politician Neiphu Rio, who broke away from the NPF and formed the NDPP.
Rio's popularity and the BJP's stress on development work and welfare schemes seems to be helping as the NDPP-BJP alliance was leading in 29 seats against the NPF's 26 seats nearly three hours after counting started at 8am.
In Meghalaya, while the BJP fielded candidates in 47 seats, its lead in a handful of seats and outreach to the NPP and smaller parties could make it a major player in the event of a fractured mandate.
Irrespective of how the results go, the counting trends reinforce the perception that the BJP has emerged as a major player in the region, following its wins in polls in Assam and Manipur and formation of a government in Arunachal Pradesh since 2015.