Amid apprehensions of post-poll horse trading in the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC), Meghalaya TMC Legislature Party leader and former chief minister Mukul Sangma on Monday described his party’s decision to contest only 16 of the 29 constituencies as a calculated political strategy shaped by what he termed a changing and “vicious” political landscape. The Trinamool Congress currently sits in the Opposition in the GHADC.
The Opposition TMC’s selective participation in the April 10 council polls has triggered political chatter, with rivals questioning the party’s limited electoral footprint. Sangma, however, asserted that the move was neither hesitant nor defensive but rooted in strategic foresight amid what he suggested is an era defined by inducement and engineered defections.
“It is our Stretegy, you see suddenly what happens when things happen. So therefore, you have to see that I don’t put my cards on the table. Because politics has become vicious because there is a need to rescript you way forward. You never know the new era of politics where political poaching and inducement and other means of power which is weaponise to weaken other political parties for the purpose of as I have said you have seen in the state of Meghalaya in the first instance was in 2018, how they managed to convince MM Danggo (then Congress MLA who after winning in 2018 resigned as a MLA to join NPP but never won any elections after that). So the politics have changed, therefore, it’s not that just because we give ticket and have an MLA or MDC, they will remain with that commitment of loyalty to the purpose. Not Mr A or B or the party but loyalty to the purpose, the larger and broader purpose of serving the people. Complete complete commitment honesty, unprecedented challenges.”
By invoking the 2018 episode involving former Congress MLA MM Danggo, Sangma pointed to what he views as a defining shift in Meghalaya’s political culture — one where loyalty can no longer be presumed merely on the basis of party ticket or electoral mandate.
When asked about four out of six sitting TMC MDCs seeking re-election as Independents, Sangma declined to offer any direct reply.
