In walking away with 12 MLAs and joining the Trinamool Congress, Dr Mukul Sangma has shown that he still has command over the majority of MLAs who were elected on a Congress ticket in 2018. He has also shown the Congress High Command that he is no pushover. The Meghalaya Congress President and his cohort may blame Dr Sangma for the great betrayal but they also know that the going is not going to be easy in 2023. While it may be good for the Congress to enrol new members but from what we have seen of the four years of MDA Government, experience means a lot in politics and governance and that lack of experience is seen in the first timer MLAs who have also suddenly been made ministers. As former MLA and minister Paul Lyngdoh articulately pointed out in his interview with this newspaper, some of the ministers in the present government lack depth and have not mastered the rules of executive business thereby leaving it to the Chief Minister to clear files of their respective departments and also to answer queries in the Assembly when searching questions are raised by the Opposition.
Dr Mukul Sangma may have been faulted for not being able to carry his flock along and taking important decisions without consulting cabinet colleagues or at least that was what his former colleagues who left the Congress before the last elections said when they joined the NPP. But Dr Sangma is on firm ground as far as governance is concerned.On his joining the TMC, Dr Sangma while speaking to a national news channel said he had been in conversation with poll strategist Prashant Kishor over several months and is convinced that the TMC has emerged as a strong opposition to the BJP and examples of that are seen in the aggressive manner with which its leader Mamata Banerjee has retained Bengal in the last Assembly elections despite the BJP having unleashed its electoral machine in full force. Dr Sangma alleged that the Congress on the contrary was laid back and unable to counter the BJP offensive. That is what has compelled him to join Mamata Banerjee’s party.
Dr Sangma has walked away from the Congress with a bang he has a huge challenge to convince the people of Meghalaya to vote for the TMC. But what may be the saving grace for Sangma is that in Meghalaya political parties and their ideologies don’t really matter. People don’t vote for lawmakers but for candidates that can address their personal grievances. Such is democracy in Meghalaya.
