Conrad Sangma assumes office of chief minister today in his second stint in the hot seat, after a gruelling electoral battle the likes of which was never seen before in the state. With the entire MDA flock intact with him in this journey, there is every reason to believe that it will be a stable government. For now, Conrad will have to forget the shenanigans of the friends and foes and get down to the serious business of governance. Now that the seemingly estranged coalition partners like the UDP are back in his brood, he should have no serious distraction. Few can miss the key component of this election results which has returned the MDA partners with facile numbers. The election was meant to be a free contest and free it was for all partners to contest independent of one another. Weathering a relentless assault on the MDA’s litany of omissions and commissions, the MDA partners have managed to hold on to their own. All the partners bore equal brunt of anti-incumbency. Therefore, former chief minister Mukul Sangma’s assertion that the people’s mandate was not for any particular party may not be entirely true. Beneath the numbers that the results have thrown up lies the obvious fact that the MDA coalition constituents have come out unscathed with 41 out 59 seats that went to the polls. Therefore, it should not surprise anybody that the MDA is sitting pretty to herald its second innings.
The fact that Prime Minister Narendra is going to attend the swearing in ceremony should be an additional feel-good factor for the new dispensation. Despite the harsh electoral rhetoric, the go-getter Modi will do some hand-holding in ushering in a new chapter of development politics in the state. Even though in the run up to the hard fought election, the BJP tried to run down the MDA regime, it will be implausible that Modi will not apply the “double engine” concept to Meghalaya. If that happens, the politicians and bureaucrats will have to be prepared to lift themselves a few notches in accelerating the movement of files and putting in place a credible system for proper execution of projects on the ground. A slipshod working system appears to have plagued the state’s march towards progress. The tough ask before the government, therefore, is to make the large battery of field staff deliver. Conrad Sangma may also like to emulate his illustrious father who in his brief stint as chief minister had ushered in an era of monitoring and holding the executive accountable.
Most politicians may find the opposition benches in the Assembly cold and less compelling. The 14 MLAs who are going to occupy these benches from now on also have an enormous responsibility of keeping the government on its toes and making sure that the issues they raised during the election campaign are taken to their logical end. It will also be interesting to watch how the two BJP members perform in pushing the development agenda. BJP harangued a lot during the campaign. They must now walk the talk. The other constituents will be expected to be the perfect “wife” of the coalition and not a “mistress”. Their proactive role will surely strengthen the hands of Conrad Sangma in the huge tasks that lie ahead. Perhaps, one expectation of the people may also be that Conrad Sangma does everything possible to ensure that the allegations of corruption in high places do not recur in his second essay as the chief minister.