By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The State Assembly Speaker Charles Pyngrope has decided to start examining the issue of ‘defection’ of 11 NCP legislators to the Purno Sangma-led National People’s Party (NPP) from Wednesday.
“I have asked the office to put up the file day so that I can start examining the complaints”, Pyngrope said on Monday.
NCP legislator Sanbor Shullai has lodged 11 separate complaints against the 11 ‘defectors’.
According to Pyngrope, he has to examine certain provisions of Anti-Defection Law before taking a final call on this issue.
“If I find that all the provisions under the Anti-Defection Law are complied with in the compliant documents of NCP, then I will inform the respondents to know whether they merged with another party as they had claimed,” Pyngrope said.
The Assembly Speaker is yet to get the official letter of merger from the Leader of Opposition Conrad Sangma.
Sangma, meanwhile, said the NPP was preparing the paper related to the merger and this would be submitted to the Speaker shortly.
Sangma, however, said that as per the provisions of the Anti- Defection Law, two-thirds of the legislators could merge with another party.
Asked whether the merger should take place at the national level since NCP is a national party, Sangma said “We are elected to the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly and the matter is concerning the elected legislators of the Assembly in the State”.