By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The newly-formed National People’s Party (NPP) has begun consulting legal experts before submitting the merger papers to the Assembly Speaker Charles Pyngrope.
“We have submitted the necessary papers to our lawyers in Delhi and they are scrutinizing the documents so that there is no loophole”, the leader of the group Conrad Sangma said on Tuesday.
Referring to the appeal made by the NCP’s central observer Robert Kharshiing, Sangma said there was no question of returning to NCP.
Sangma also informed that all the block-level NCP committees have merged with the NPP affirming and accelerating the spread of activities of NPP in the state.
According to him, the delay in formalizing the merger was due to the fact that the party was waiting for various block-level committees to merge with NPP.
“We did not want to take any risk. We want all the documents to be in order,” Sangma said.
While the NPP is banking on para 4 of the Anti-Defection Law which indicates that two-third of the legislators can merge with another party, the NCP is focusing on the spirit of the Anti- Defection Law which prohibits switching of allegiance of legislators to another party without resigning from the Assembly.
The NCP had earlier termed the merger as invalid since NCP is a national party and the argument of the party is that if at all there is a merger or split, it has to take place at the national level.
In the case of 12 NCP legislators, the merger took place at the state level.
The Speaker is yet to respond to the letter written by NCP general secretary DP Tripathi opposing ‘defection’ of the 12 NCP legislators.