SHILLONG, Dec 18: With the KHADC and the JHADC scheduled to go to polls on February 21, political parties in the state have begun announcing their list of candidates with the Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee chief Vincent H Pala on Wednesday stating that the party would release its first list of candidates on Thursday.
He told reporters on Wednesday that the names of candidates for 15 KHADC and 10 JHADC seats would be announced in the first list.
He said the first list of candidates would be for constituencies with lone ticket aspirants.
Pala said Congress would field candidates in all 29 seats in the KHADC but would leave four to five seats in the JHADC for other political parties with which it has an understanding.
The MPCC chief also said they are planning to convene a meeting of all the ticket aspirants of the constituencies where more than one aspirant applied for party tickets.
“We will appeal to the candidates to try and arrive at some kind of compromise by working together even if they failed to get the party tickets,” he said.
Replying to a query, Pala said the party would give preference to deserving candidates and that winnability would be a major factor in the allotment of the tickets.
He also said 90% of the party candidates would be fresh faces. A few would be sitting and former MDCs.
Admitting that the party’s last-minute decision to pull out of the NPP-led Executive Council in the KHADC would have an impact, he said Congress decided to work with the NPP earlier to prevent the imposition of the administrator’s rule.
“We decided on the amendment of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution was still on. This was done so that the council could give its valuable suggestion to the proposed amendment,” he added.
Pala said the party has been preparing for the upcoming polls to the KHADC and JHADC for the past four to five months.
He said the party provided training to the probable candidates, presidents of the District Congress Committees and Block Congress Committees, and some of the leaders of the party for the upcoming district council polls.
“We want to ensure everyone is on the same page on the issues to be raised during the campaign,” he said.
Among other political parties, the NPP and the UDP have declared their list of candidates in most of the seats while the TMC is still unsure about contesting the ADC polls.
The UDP and HSPDP have decided to temporarily suspend their partnership under the Regional Democratic Alliance (RDA) to contest the district council polls separately.
