Election tempo in the state of Nagaland is steadily rising with the elections due either in the last week of February or the first week of March.

In what can be seen as a big blow to the ruling Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), senior NDPP leaders in the likes of NDPP working president and co-founder of the party Alemtemshi Jamir, IAS (Retd), who was also former chief secretary, along with NDPP Advisor T N Manen and several other senior party leaders from the NDPP has formally agreed to join the BJP party.

Sources informed that a meeting between the NDPP leaders and the BJP party was held at Niathu Resort in Chümoukedima this afternoon and the leaders have formally agreed to join the saffron party. The NDPP leaders have not officially joined the party as they are yet to resign from the NDPP, the source informed.

The NDPP and the BJP are alliance partners in the current UDA Government. The partners had renewed their alliance and decided to contest the assembly polls with the same seat sharing formula of 20/40 as in 2018 at the meeting in New Delhi, which was attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president JP Nadda, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma and Nagaland CM Neiphiu Rio.