By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Nov 21: Cabinet Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh on Tuesday said if her NPP decides to field her from the Shillong seat in next year’s Lok Sabha elections, she will take up the challenge.
“The party has to decide it and I am no one to influence that. If they are putting me up to the task, I will rise (to the challenge),” Lyngdoh said.
An NPP insider claimed she had approached party’s “higher authorities” expressing her willingness to contest the polls and they “granted” her request. The insider also claimed that she has the support of most NPP leaders, including the “influential” Dhar and associates.
When Lyngdoh was asked about the reports, she said, “I will not comment at this point in time. It is not correct and I feel the party is the competent authority to share this kind of information with you.”
“There are procedures that they probably have in place and there are interests that have already been expressed. As a party worker and one who is here to serve the people of the state, I will take up any challenge that my party thinks I am in a position to take,” she added.
Asked if this means there is too much on her plate, she said, “Challenges come and go and no one can, at any point, say there is too much on his or her plate. What comes to your plate is something you have to decide whether you can digest and at this point in time, this is history repeating itself.”
She said she has been always put up to these kinds of challenges and she never shied away.
“…I am a person who takes up any challenge as it comes. (But) I won’t bite more than I can chew. This is something not beyond chewable or out of the ordinary,” the NPP stalwart said.
She said she is a qualified person and has the experience.
“I have evaluated it and I know it will be difficult. I will do the needful and my team is the most important thing. I cannot go for elections if my team is not mentally prepared or if the NPP team is not ready,” she said.
“There are 36 (Assembly) constituencies for one Shillong Parliamentary seat. Are all the 36 blocks going to rise and come forward to help me? They and the party will decide. Once you put me on a task, I work very hard. They have to keep up with the pace and I hope they will be able to do that,” she added.
Agatha for Tura seat
The NPP is more or less certain to field its sitting MP Agatha Sangma from the Tura seat.
“We are almost 100 per cent sure that Agatha Sangma will be our candidate but a final decision will be taken by the party’s election committee,” NPP working president Marcuise Marak said.
Stating that the election wave cannot be assessed now as the election mood is yet to set in, he said the NPP will contest from both seats.
Asked about the aspirants from the Shillong seat, Marak said the names of Ampareen Lyngdoh, Dasakhiatbha Lamare and HM Shangpliang are doing the rounds and the party’s election committee will soon sit and take a call.
He downplayed the NPP’s poor performance in the Khasi Hills region stating that the election situation keeps on changing.