MEGHALAYA:
After the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday announced that an adjourned election for the Sohïong Assembly constituency will be held on May 10, the Congress said that it will wait for the campaign to start, and then the party will know its position.
The counting is scheduled for May 13.
Earlier this year, the election for the Sohiong seat was adjourned after the demise of United Democratic Party (UDP) candidate HDR Lyngdoh.
Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Ronnie V Lyngdoh said that Lyngdoh was a popular man and won elections on Congress tickets in the past. It may be mentioned that Lyngdoh last won the Sohïong seat in 2013 on a Congress ticket but lost the 2018 elections to Samlin Malgniang of the Hill State People’s Democratic Party. Malgniang has since dumped the party and will now contest on a National People’s Party ticket.
Lyngdoh, who left the Congress for UDP, and was exceptionally confident of a win, died days before the Assembly polls. The UDP then named Lyngdoh’s nephew Synshar Kupar Roy Lyngdoh Thabah as a candidate for Sohïong.
National People’s Party leader and cabinet minister Ampareen Lyngdoh on Wednesday exuded confidence that her party will win the Sohiong seat. “We will work very hard and we will try to retain the seat. It was the NPP seat and it should not be a very complicated matter because the candidate belongs to the NPP and we will try our best to retain that seat,” she added.
NPP General Secretary (East Khasi Hills) Aibor Tynsong informed that the party will meet soon to discuss the Sohïong election. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, he said, “We have seen the notification of the Election Commission and we will sit for a meeting soon. The state election committee and the district will have a meeting on the matter.”
With political parties facing one another in the election arena again, Tynsong said that the target is to win the Sohïong election even as he said that the mandate rests with the people. Meanwhile, NPP youth wing president Nicky Nongkhlaw said that the NPP will work and inform the people of its ideologies and will fight the elections based on these, even though its rival in the byelection, UDP is part of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance 2.0 ruling coalition.
He said, “The people of Sohïong are wise. It is after all a government led by NPP.”