Meghalaya poll 2018
SHILLONG: With no pre-poll alliance plan by the non-Congress regional parties, Congress may get an upper hand in the 2018 Assembly polls.
Recently while the BJP president Shibun Lyngdoh, and UDP president Donkupar Roy had said that the focus now is to strengthen the party before deciding on any alliance, the view of the HSPDP chief Ardent Basaiawmoit was that the party was in favour of post-poll alliance.
Moreover, the HSPDP has already distanced itself from the newly floated political outfit, North East Democratic Alliance headed by BJP and supported by other major non-Congress political parties in the Northeast including UDP and NPP.
However, the NPP national president and Tura MP Conrad Sangma had said that NPP was trying to reach out to likeminded political parties in the state to have a pre-poll alliance to take on the Congress in the 2018 Assembly polls.
Besides the sympathy factor and anti-incumbency, the unity and solidarity of all the non- Congress political parties was instrumental in securing the victory of the NPP candidate Conrad Sangma in the by-poll to Tura Lok Sabha seat.
The parties which supported Sangma included BJP, UDP, HSPDP, KHNAM, and GNC.
Political observers feel that in the past Assembly polls, the trend in Meghalaya was to go for post-poll alliances rather than pre-poll arrangements including seat sharing.
Different ideologies and uncertainly over the fate of many party candidates in the polls were the reasons which led to political parties insisting for post-poll alliances in the state, observers said.
However, sources said that with the Assam experience of pre-poll alliance which ensured the victory of the alliance, most of the leaders of non-Congress parties in the state wish to emulate the same pattern in the context of heavy anti-incumbency factor of Congress-led MUA-II government in Meghalaya.
