By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The UDP State Election Committee (SEC) has not been able to take a final call on the allotment of the party ticket for the prestigious Nongthymmai constituency.
The party has again deferred the matter to the next SEC meeting which is scheduled to be held sometime in October last week.
“We have not yet been able to decide on the allotment of the party ticket for the Nongthymmai constituency,” UDP working president Paul Lyngdoh told reporters after the SEC meeting here on Tuesday.
While informing that the issue did come up for the discussion in the meeting, he said that they were narrowing down the conflict points of the two contenders for the party ticket.
“We are hopeful to be able to take a final decision on this issue in our next meeting of the SEC scheduled to be held in October,” Lyngdoh who is also the party spokesperson said.
The two contenders for the ticket for Nongthymmai constituency are sitting MDC Latiplang Kharkongor and Dr Jemino Mawthoh.
The UDP spokesperson also informed that the SEC has also not been to take a final call on the allotment of the party tickets for Sohiong, Nongkrem and Jirang constituencies.
“We will take a final call on the three constituencies in the upcoming SEC meeting,” the UDP working president said.
While informing that UDP East Khasi Hills district president RA Lyngdoh has briefed the EC about the plans of several parties to put up a common candidate for Sohiong constituency, he said there are some formalities which have to completed before the party finally announced the candidate.
Earlier, it was reported five political parties-UDP, BJP, NCP, KHNAM and LJP-have decided to put up the project manager of Meghalaya Government Construction Corporation (MGCC) Breston Kharphuli as a common candidate to contest against Home Minister HDR Lyngdoh from Sohiong constituency in the upcoming Assembly election.
Kharphuli who has already applied for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) will contest on a UDP ticket.
The UDP spokesperson however did not disclose the reasons for the delay in the allotment of the party tickets for Nongkrem and Jirang constituencies.
Meanwhile, informed party sources said that the party SEC could not take any decision on Nongkrem since the party sitting legislator Ardent M Basaiawmoit is yet to submit an application to indicate that he still wanted to contest from the party ticket.
While the policy of the party is very clear that the ticket would be given to the sitting legislator, informed party sources said, “This formality of submitting applications is applied to all sitting legislators. But Basaiawmoit is adamant in his stand despite the party leadership requesting him to submit the application at the earliest”.
According to informed party sources, the party leadership is in a state of ‘dilemma’ on how to reach out to Basaiawmoit since he is trying to maintain distance from the party.
As far as Jirang constituency is concerned, informed party sources said that the sitting party legislator from Jirang, JD Rymbai has sought for more time to get the opinion of his supporters on the candidate who would contest the upcoming election from the party.
Informed party sources said that as of today there are two contenders for the party ticket from Jirang constituency.
Meanwhile, the UDP spokesperson informed that the party SEC has cleared the names of the candidates for the five constituencies.
The names of the candidates are BG Momin (Mendipathar), Dr Mohammed Mizanur Rehman Nazi (Rajabala), Waran N Sangma (Resulbelpara), Sing Mulieh (Jowai) and Mihsalan Suchen (Mookaiaw).
With these five candidates, he said that the party has so far released the names of the candidates for 36 constituencies.