New Delhi: Amid elaborate security arrangements, polling began in North Eastern states of Nagaland and Meghalaya today.

 Meghalaya and Nagaland have 60 Assembly seats each, but voting is being held for 59 constituencies in the two states. The election has been countermanded at Williamnagar in Meghalaya following the killing of the NCP candidate in an IED blast on February 18, while NDPP chief Neiphiu Rio has been declared elected unopposed from the Northern Angami-II constituency in Nagaland.

Buoyed by its back-to-back victories in Assam and Manipur polls, BJP is trying to make the region free of both Congress and the Left. But its success will be clear on March 3 — the counting day. The poll results will also redefine Congress position as it fights to save Meghalaya, one of the two remaining bases in the Northeast. If Meghalaya falls, Congress will be left with only Mizoram.

BJP has adopted different strategies to fight elections in the NE. In Tripura, where the fight is over Left and Right ideologies, it is in the driver’s seat of the alliance with Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura. But in Nagaland and Meghalaya, where religion plays an important role, BJP has chosen to play a subdued role lest it should rub the voters the wrong way. The party has used its trump card — PM Narendra Modi — just once in the two states.

Modi, however, went on offensive against the Left Front in Tripura by addressing four rallies at select venues in two days. A large number of his cabinet colleagues were drafted for this tiny state only. In Nagaland, after its old ally and ruling Naga People’s Front (NPF) rejected its proposal for a pre-poll seat-sharing agreement, BJP turned towards Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party, an offshoot of NPF, headed by its old loyalist Neiphiu Rio, for collaboration.