Shillong, March 10: Four regional political parties of Meghalaya today floated the Regional Parties Alliance (RPA) and selected North Eastern Hill University mathematician S. Loniak Marbaniang as a consensus candidate for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The parties, which are part of the Congress-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) had earlier decided not to align with the Congress but file a common candidate to contest the Shillong parliamentary seat.
The decision of the regional parties to join hands and contest the Lok Sabha elections has made the Congress wary that a combined force might well eat into its votebank. Congress insiders admitted that ideally the party would have been in a comfortable position had all the parties contested the election separately. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, Congress candidate P.R. Kyndiah won by a very narrow margin against United Democratic Party (UDP) candidate S.D. Khongwir.
Prior to today?s decision to form the alliance, the Congress had made several futile attempts to convince its coalition partners in the MDA not to contest against each other.
In fact, Meghalaya chief minister D.D. Lapang who is also the Congress Legislature Party leader, had openly said the Congress would favour all political parties ?contesting the elections alone?.
However, the regional parties, which include the UDP, the Meghalaya Democratic Party (MDP), the Hill State Peoples? Democratic Party (HSPDP) and the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement (KHNAM) refused to budge from their decision to enter the polls together.
Marbaniang?s candidature, though, has come as surprise to many as he was preferred to political heavyweights like former chief minister E.K. Mawlong and former finance minister A.H. Scott Lyngdoh. Marbaniang has been shuttling between state politics and academics after he lost the 1998 Assembly election while contesting on a Congress ticket.
?We should not lose sight of our regional aspirations as that is the very base of our politics,? Marbaniang said, soon after being named the alliance candidate. Marbaniang will, however, have an uphill task defeating sitting Kyndiah in Shillong.
?Our main objective was to form a regional alliance and we do not know what the BJP or other parties are thinking. It is up to them,? said MDP president Martle Mukhim. Asked if the regional alliance would take the BJP?s support, Mukhim said the options were still open.
The BJP, which all along has been pushing for a consensus candidate, seems upset. BJP president A.L. Hek said the party might field its ?own candidate?.