AS THE ruling NDPP-BJP alliance got a majority in the 60-member Nagaland Assembly by winning 37 seats on Thursday, political stalwart and its longest-serving chief minister Neiphiu Rio is set to assume office as chief minister for a fifth consecutive term after a convincing win for his party and its BJP ally.

As per the latest ECI trends, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) won 25 seats while its alliance partner secured 12 seats, the EC said. The NDPP-BJP had fought the elections on the 40:20 seat-sharing arrangement this year. 

Rio won the Northern Angami-II Assembly constituency, defeating Congress' Seyievilie Sachu by a mammoth margin of 15,824 votes. He bagged a total of 17,045 votes, which comes to 92.87 per cent of the total votes polled in the seat.

Soon after the NDPP-BJP alliance marked the victory, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked the people of Nagaland for winning. "I thank the people of Nagaland for blessing the NDPP-BJP alliance with yet another mandate to serve the state. The double-engine government will keep working for the state's progress. I laud our party workers for their hard work which ensured this result," he said in a tweet.

Nagaland political leader and party chief contested the 2018 state general elections with a pre-poll agreement with the saffron party. The alliance won 30 seats, 18 by the regional party and 12 by the saffron party and formed the government with the support of 2 NPP MLAs, one from JD(U) and an Independent MLA ending the 15-year reign of NPF in the state.

H A Hongnao Konyak, vice-president, of Konyak Union (KU), attributed Rio's sustained victory at electoral politics to his expertise in forging alliances.

"He knows that his party may not be able to sail through on its own. Hence, he enters into carefully thought-out alliances. Even this time, he continued the alliance with the party in power at the Centre and made them concede majority seats to his NDPP," Konyak told PTI.