GUWAHATI: As expected, suspended Meghalaya Congress MLAs Ampareen Lyngdoh and Mohendro Rapsang resigned from the Assembly as well as the party on Monday and joined the National People’s Party (NPP), which heads the state’s ruling coalition.
In February this year, the Congress had suspended all its five MLAs in the state for their decision to support the ruling coalition which has the BJP as a constituent. Ever since then, they virtually had no connection whatsoever with the grand old party.
In her resignation letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Lyngdoh, who is a former minister, noted that the Congress has lost touch with the people of the state.
“I have been a staunch supporter and foot soldier of the Congress…However, recent developments within the party have led me to believe that it has lost its sense of direction. There has been a pressing need for the party and its leadership to reflect on this. Sincere and honest attempts to lead such self-introspection, I believe, have failed,” Lyngdoh wrote.
“…I no longer believe it is the best platform for me to serve them. It is with deep regret, therefore, that I am writing to tender my formal resignation from primary membership, effective immediately,” she further wrote.
Lyngdoh and Rapsang were inducted into the NPP at a function attended among others by the party’s national president and Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma.
According to observers of Meghalaya politics, it is only a matter of time before the remaining three Congress MLAs desert the party to contest the state elections, expected in February, on the tickets of other parties.
The Congress had emerged as the single largest party in the 2018 polls. But in November last year, 12 of its 17 MLAs, led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, had jumped ship to wear Trinamool Congress (TMC) colours.
Their desertion had relegated the grand old party to a smaller party and made the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC the state’s principal opposition overnight. It had no base in the state prior to that.