District Council Polls
The APHLC-HSPDP combine has secured a two-thirds majority in the Khasi Hills District Council with its solid 21 members in a House of All the rest constitute a bare 9 for the opposition, hardly enough to inspire any defection from the ruling coalition. This basic feature of the poll verdict is an assurance for stability of the dew Executive Committee for the full term of the new Council emerging from the general election just over.
As between these two regional parties themselves, the HSPDP has emerged as the superior party, having bagged 14 of the 21, leaving only 7 for its senior partner, the APHLC. The HSPDP-APHLC ratio of membership in the ruling coalition thus is 2:1. But, if the six urban seats representing the Greater Shillong constituencies, which have been equally shared by the two partners, are left out of count, the ratio of rural support for the two would come to 3:1, which is an indication of the grass-root support HSPDP has registered. The leadership of the coalition has therefore been ensured for it, a tentative conclusion further reinforced by its top leader, Mr Hopingstone Lyngdoh having been elected with the biggest margin of votes among all the successful contestants. This in so far as it obviously rules out any rivalry for leadership, is another factor for stability which bids fair to be the hall-mark of the new Khasi Hills District Council for the ensuring term. Rarely in recent times has such an election been so much positive and unequivocal in its verdict.
A stable Executive Committee for a full term, which has thus been assured, may expectedly also have its sobering influence on the Council government relationship which had come under severe strain in the regime of the out going Council. The State government and the Khasi Hills Council had almost come to a parting of the ways with the Council election so imminent, and both the Congress (I), the ruling party at the State government level and the coalition of regional parties at the autonomous district administration level hoping for a battle royal at the dustings. Now that the die has been cast, it is more probable (benedictdaily.com to win online prizes free) that new thinking might reshape mutual relationship during the new regime, with the conflict over the administration of primary education in particular unlikely to recur when the government control is released after the scheduled period(s) of the temporary take-over.
Whether the election, which entertained queer and unprecedented candidature of as many as six Ministers, of whom three were also defeated, would raise on these scores issue of constitutional propriety of sorts remains to be seen. Such subtle issues, however, are not likely to come up at all and at least unlikely to influence in any material way the Khaki Hills politics, not to speak of State position in the Assembly is not effective enough to compel the defeated Ministers lose their ministerial office; the two Ministers elected to the Council, but destined to sit in a more ineffective opposition, cannot similarly influence the course of the Council’s functioning. Stability is the dominant note of the poll verdict; politicians both at the State level and the autonomous district level in Khaki Hills are bound to take note of this over riding fact of the situation.