BJP fields woman for lone Rajya Sabha seat from Nagaland

Party has fielded a woman from Konyak Naga community whose 14 members were killed by armed forces in 2021 

The Bharatiya Janata Party has named a woman for the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Nagaland.

S. Phangnon Konyak is set to be the second woman to represent the State in Parliament after Rano M. Shaiza was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977.

But what has made her nomination significant is the Naga community she belongs to — Konyak. Fourteen of her tribesmen were killed in a botched ambush by an elite unit of the Army and subsequent violence on December 4 and 5, 2021.

A State party leader, though, said one should “not read much” into Ms. Konyak’s nomination. “She is a capable leader and got nominated for her loyalty to the party,” he said, declining to be quoted.

The BJP is a minor partner in the Opposition-less government in Nagaland. Its allies are the Naga People’s Front and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party.

Ms. Konyak was one of four Rajya Sabha nominees that the BJP announced on Friday. The others are Pabitra Margherita from Assam, Sikandar Kumar from Himachal Pradesh and Manik Saha from Tripura.

An actor and former president of the Jyoti Chitraban film studio in Guwahati, Mr. Margherita is a spokesperson of the BJP’s Assam unit. He was made the member-secretary of the State-Level Advisory Committee for student and youth welfare in November last year.