The verdict of the people of the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) in the just-concluded election to the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) is undoubtedly a wonderful outcome of the rich democratic tradition that Assam has always protected and nurtured. All the contesting parties and candidates participated in the campaign with a lot of enthusiasm and maintained peace and order, while voters came out in large numbers to exercise their franchise. As far as conducting the election and making it successful are concerned, both — the State Election Commission and the voters — deserve a “ten-upon-ten” score for their respective contributions. One must agree that the election scenario had remained hazy all through the campaign period. While the UPPL, headed by Pramod Boro, maintained that it would continue to remain the first choice of the voters, the BPF, on its part, ran an interesting campaign in the typical manner in which supremo Hagrama Mohilary always makes his presence felt. The BJP, on its part, kept its options open by announcing that whichever party (UPPL or BPF) gets a majority, it would be the saffron party’s gain. A section of analysts now want to say that since the BJP and UPPL are allies in Dispur and Delhi, their common votes were split and contributed to the BPF’s landslide victory. This may be considered as partially true, but not entirely. Since the BJP maintained equal distance from both parties, it is now the right time for the saffron party to embrace both the regional parties with equal warmth. Such a stand is required for several reasons and objectives. The most important is the urgency to protect the indigenous and ethnic communities of Assam from the silent demographic invasion of the migrants having roots in erstwhile East Bengal, erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh, and their fast-multiplying progeny. A series of measures taken by the BJP-led alliance government in Assam in recent times is to protect the reserved forests, government lands and land belonging to indigenous institutions by evicting the encroachers, the overwhelming majority of whom are people belonging to the migrant category. Equally important is the need to ensure rapid overall socio-economic development of the region by involving the ethnic communities in the development process. With the verdict clearly going in favour of the BPF (which had ruled BTC for fifteen long years before it was ousted by the voters five years ago), it is now no longer relevant to find out how the UPPL performed in the past five years; the people have already given their decision. Despite that, one must agree that the UPPL worked hard in the past five years to take Bodoland to a different plane. Contributing towards making insurgency and armed militancy a thing of the past, bringing about an atmosphere of mutual trust among various communities, and changing the mindset of the young generation – for instance, will always remain in public memory. One can probably say that despite this there was a “dil mange more” situation, as also something “different” the people were looking for which Pramod Boro’s UPPL could not comprehend. While change is always the most permanent thing in this world, it is now the responsibility of Hagrama Mohilary’s BPF to understand what exactly the unfulfilled aspirations of the people are and what this change actually means. Looking beyond the election, one aspect which must be kept in mind is that the BTC can now be easily converted into an opposition-less House so that every decision, big or small, can be taken through a perfect consensus. This will also help fulfil the hitherto unfulfilled aspirations of the people in general. The three parties which will constitute the new BTC Assembly will, in a way, also be able to create a new model of development for the region.