SHILLONG, March 10: The ruling coalition partner UDP seems to be on the throes of an internal fissure over whether or not to honour a verdict of its deceased president on the issue of sharing CEM’s post in KHADC.
In 2019, UDP made a deal with the party MDCs to install Teinwell Dkhar as CEM for one year to be followed by Titosstarwell Chyne for the next two years after which Paul Lyngdoh will take over for the remaining two years.
The hitch is that after Donkupar Roy’s death, Chyne believes that a dead man’s word doesn’t count.
Lyngdoh said he will not be making a fresh move and instead will be referring only to a decision taken at the instance of the former party president (Donkupar Roy).
“This decision taken by (L) Dr Roy was not as an individual but as president of the UDP. So it is binding on the party and the present incumbent to respect that decision,” the Jaiaw MDC said.
According to him, he did not want to rake up this issue during the budget session which ended on Thursday since it will give the impression that he was trying to topple the present EC.
He said that he will be writing to Chyne, the parliamentary party leader of the UDP in the KHADC and also to the party president (Metbah Lyngdoh) by next week.
Interestingly, Chyne has a supporter in UDP parliamentary party secretary, Jambor War, who holds the view that the 2019 agreement was no longer valid.
According to him, the agreement does not hold merit after the Executive Committee led by Dkhar collapsed in 2019.
War recalled that Paul Lyngdoh and Mawlai MDC Teibor Pathaw, who is an associate member of the UDP, had switched their allegiance to the other group which led to the toppling of the Dkhar-led EC.
War also said that the UDP MDCs who remained with the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), which was supported by the NPP, had worked very hard to form the EC again in the KHADC.
He said that it was a unanimous decision of both the UDP and NPP MDCs to nominate Chyne to the post of CEM.
War also claimed that the agreement of holding the CEM post on rotation basis was scrapped when the party MDCs elected Chyne as their new PP leader.
“Both Lyngdoh and Pathaw had later returned to the UDP,” War added.
The controversial issue has the potential to become an avoidable plot for UDP headache ahead of next year’s polls, unless it is able to handle it with adroitness.