By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The State Assembly Speaker Charles Pyngrope on Wednesday sought response from 11 NCP legislators who had defected to the newly formed National People’s Party (NPP) recently.
The Speaker issued this order while acting on a complaint lodged by the NCP legislator Sanbor Shullai.
Shullai wanted the Speaker to disqualify the defected legislators based on the provisions of the anti-defection law which prohibits merger or defection at the state level since NCP is a national party.
However, another view is that since it is pertaining only to the members of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, the rules of the Assembly has provisions to give nod to the merger.
The Speaker will give his verdict on the matter once he gets the response from the defected members.
Though originally there were 15 NCP legislators, Shullai and Adolf Hitler Marak did not merge with the NPP on August 14.
While Tura seat is lying vacant after its legislator PA Sangma resigned to contest the Presidential polls in July, Chokpot fell vacant following the death of MM Sangma.
Separate letters were issued only to eleven defected NCP legislators by the Speaker.
The Leader of Opposition Conrad Sangma said on Wednesday that only he and a few others received the letter from Assembly Secretariat and added that since as many as 8 legislators are out of station , there can be some delay in replying to the Assembly Speaker.
“Though we have to submit our reply within a week, we will have to wait for our MLAs, who are out of station to arrive,” Sangma said.
The defected legislators are yet to give any official documents related to the merger to the Assembly Speaker and hence the defected legislators are still considered as NCP members in the House.
However, outside the House, the defected members had been engaged in forming various units of NPP in the whole state.
The NCP legislator Shullai lodged the complaint with the Speaker after a similar complaint filed by NCP general secretary, DP Tripathi was rejected by the Speaker on the ground that Tripathi is not a member of the House.