The die for the Presidential election is cast. That Ram Nath Kovind will be the next President is a foregone conclusion and Meghalaya Chief Minister, Dr Mukul Sangma too seems prepared for the verdict. In fact, he was not saying anything new when he said the RSS was behind the radical agenda of the NDA government at the Centre. Unlike the Congress Party whose grassroots units have whittled away, the RSS is the dedicated workforce of the BJP. Whenever the RSS have worked in tandem with the BJP, the latter has won elections. In Bihar there were differences between the BJP and RSS and the result was a Nitish Kumar rerun which allowed Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family to be in the seat of power. To counter the RSS the Congress needs to have á similar decicated workforce which unfortunately it does not have. So for the Chief Minister to keep reminding the people of Meghalaya about the hidden agenda of the BJP-RSS combine without his own party being able to make a resurgence and to capture the imagination of the voters, is pointless.
Meanwhile the HSPDP has not had the courage of conviction to make its stand clear. By desisting from voting in the Presential election the HSPDP is telling the people of Meghalaya and particularly its supporters that it chooses neither the Congress nor the BJP nominees. So who does the HSPDP want to see in Rashtrapati Bhavan? The BJP, Congress and CPM are, for the moment, the only national parties with the Left having lost much ground and the Congress reduced to a paltry number in Parliament. In a country like India regional forces have limited appeal as they cannot hold the country together, besetted as they are by their regional concerns and pulls. The HSPDP would need to explain its ambiguity to the electorate. Has the Party consulted the electorate before the Presidenatial poll and is the abstention from voting a popular mandate? In a democracy you cannot fool all the people all the time because come 2018, there is a possibility that the HSPDP might have to sup with what it considers as the ‘devil’ today.