Greater demand for Priyanka, Tharoor for campaigns: Meghalaya Congress says competition is better

Shillong, Dec 21 Two central Congress leaders, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Shashi Tharoor, will be in great demand for election campaigning in Meghalaya.

Sources say that the state leaders have already requested senior party leader Mukul Wasnik to take up the matter with the high command and ensure that Kerala MP Tharoor and Congress General Secretary Priyanka be deputed for aggressive campaigning in Meghalaya.

The Congress is now friendless, and so is fighting the ensuing polls in Meghalaya all alone.  

Regional parties are keeping a safe distance from it though most are willing to do business with the BJP once polls are over. The ruling NPP of Conrad Sangma is at the receiving end of fierce criticism from all other small and big players in the northeastern state but even NPP has sought to make a dent in the Congress support base.

Two prominent former Congress legislators in Shillong, Ampareen Lyngdoh and Mohendro Ropsang, formally quit the grand old party and joined the Sangma-led NPP.

In her resignation letter to AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, Ampareen Lyngdoh wrote "recent developments led me to believe that Congress has lost its sense of direction".

Ampareen actually had defied party line since last year and had extended support to Conrad Sangma government along with four other colleagues.

Thus, her final decision to quit the Congress has not surprised many; grapevine is that even the BJP had approached her and even offered a ticket for East Shillong which includes the educational nerve centre of Shillong - the Laitumukrah region of the city.

Now Congress is all set to field Manuel Badwar, 42-year-old MBA graduate from IIM Calcutta. He was given organisational responsibilities in East Shillong from 2021 itself.

Now Badwar says he or for that matter even the Congress party is indifferent to what's happening around.

"Come what may and let the likes of Mukul Sangma and Ampareen Lyngdoh quit...The Congress goodwill and support base is intact. We are fortunate that even at the organisational level there was not much damage to Congress in Shillong areas where we have six seats," Badwar told .

"Moreover I look at things differently... So I will say the evolution of politics in Meghalaya vis-a-vis BJP or even Trinamool Congress, finally the politics is moving in the right direction. Because the more the competition, the better it is for the public," he said.

These help even local parties take aggressive and more vocal postures. "I believe that politic cannot take politic for a ride. It is sad that most of the parties do not raise too many right questions," he said, and added that with bigger parties coming into the warfront they will raise more pertinent questions.

"Of course I will never say...the arrival of the BJP is good. But aggressive politics is good. Everybody, even from the national point of view of politics, is keeping a hawk's eye on Meghalaya," he said.  

"Of course", he said the regional parties are weak "in terms of upholding the ideologies and maintaining their independence".

According to him the Congress party is not against any post-poll alliance making.

To a question he said, "We have ideological differences with some parties. If I am to draw a diagram, there may be an intersection point between the Congress and Trinamool Congress. But there is no such intersection point between the Congress and the BJP."

(Nirendra Dev is a New Delhi-based journalist. He is also author of books, 'The Talking Guns: North East India' and 'Modi to Moditva: An Uncensored Truth'. Views are personal)

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