GUWAHATI: With polls over, the regional political groups in Meghalaya can very well hope for a win-win situation for them after the poll results are declared on March 3.
As a fractured verdict is most likely, this has been a convention in the state since 1972, because of so many parties in the fray to share the only over 18 lakh votes. There was only one formidable alliance between HSPDP, UDP and GNC and that too is not very significant in case of Garo Hills areas having 24 Assembly constituencies.
The NPP which successfully resisted the BJP’s overture to have a pre-poll alliance out of fear of antagonising the majority Christian voters in the state, hopes for post-poll ties with all anti-Congress parties to form the next government.
The ruling Congress which, according to party sources, hopes to win enough seats to be able to form the next government on its own, will vie for forging a coalition with the regional political parties like the UDP, HSPDP, KHNAM to secure the future and impart stability to the next government headed by it. So, in both the plausible post-poll scenarios, the regional parties will be in a position to call the shots in formation of the next government in the state.
Meanwhile, the BJP which has embarked on its ‘oust Congress and Left’ mission in the Northeast, by forging ties with regional parties to compensate for its lack of extensive mass base in the region, though sounds upbeat about its poll performance in Left-ruled Tripura and in Nagaland ruled by Nagaland People’s Front (NPF), does not sound so confident about its poll performance in Meghalaya where it failed to stitch any formal pre-poll alliance with any of the regional parties including the NPP that is an ally of the BJP in Manipur and in the Centre. The BJP sources here further said that selection of candidates in some of constituencies in Meghalaya could have been much better especially in certain urban seats.
The Congress campaign terming the BJP and NPP as two sides of the same coin could have had bearing in the minds of the voters who were also exposed to a poll campaign with an overdose of religion (pro and anti-Christianity), ethnicity, food habit etc. that virtually dusted issues related to development, corruption, governance under the carpet.
