South Shillong MLA Sanbor Shullai of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today publicly backed the candidacy of lawyer Fenela Lyngdoh Nonglait for the Shillong Lok Sabha seat.
Nonglait only joined the BJP in December and last month said that she would be willing to stand for the saffron party in the upcoming parliamentary polls.
In making his preference clear, Shullai also urged Pynthorumkhrah MLA and cabinet minister AL Hek and former state party leader Ernest Mawrie to support Nonglait as well.
The BJP appears keen to have a female candidate for the seat. This follows soon after the central government passed a law reserving a certain proportion of seats in Parliament for women, though this will not apply to the 2024 election. The National People’s Party (NPP) has already declared a woman – sitting cabinet minister Ampareen Lyngdoh – as its candidate.
In a letter to state BJP president Rikman Momin today, Shullai said that party workers in his South Shillong constituency met recently to discuss a suitable candidate. While nominations are possible and a recommendation from the state party important, the decision on candidates will only be taken by the BJP central body.
“Considering all important aspects and demands of the state, it is high time that we field a highly intellectual and knowledgeable person who can fight for our cause in New Delhi,” the letter to Momin said. “A strong representation will ensure our party’s growth in the state. So, considering all prerequisites, our party karyakartas from South Shillong have unanimously decided to support aspiring candidate Fenela Lyngdoh Nonglait, who happens to be a gold medallist in law. Her strong educational and professional background will also be a striking representation of our matrilineal society. Her clean image and timely intervention on various local issues will help us to ensure a good vote share from rural areas too.”
Shullai was the BJP’s candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha election for the Shillong seat but finished with less than 10 percent of the constituency vote.
He asked Momin to put forward the views and suggestions of the South Shillong party workers to the BJP central leaders. The South Shillong voice could count for something as it has a large number (Shullai said the “highest”) of BJP members in Meghalaya.
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters, Shullai said that he has talked about Nonglait’s candidacy to Mawrie and called on him to support the lawyer instead of positioning himself for the ticket.
Shullai also planned on meeting Hek this evening. In November, Hek said that he is one of the probable candidates of the BJP for the Shillong Lok Sabha seat.
Although he won his Assembly seat quite comfortably the year before, Shullai was unable to make much of an impact in the 2019 parliament election. Today he said that he had not been given much time to campaign as the party chose him late in the day. He also claimed that he had been assured of a “promising” portfolio in the Union cabinet had he won.
The Shillong seat is held by the Congress Party’s Vincent Pala. He won by a whopping margin five years ago, taking an absolute majority of votes. Shullai said that the people of the constituency regret choosing the sitting MP, who, he claimed, has only wasted time in Parliament “by eating nuts”.
Picking a BJP member “will be a great blessing and bring lots of development and job opportunities to the state,” Shullai promised.
