Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee president Vincent Pala has spelled out his reasons for not wanting a pre-poll alliance with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for the upcoming Lok Sabha election in Meghalaya, accusing the TMC’s leaders of planning on defecting to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Both the Congress and TMC are part of the national INDIA opposition alliance that appears to be finding it difficult to arrive at a seat sharing arrangement in many states.
That was also the case in Meghalaya. The TMC staked its claim to Tura – the Garo Hills is where it won four out of its five MLAs at the last Assembly election. The Congress, by contrast, only won one Garo Hills constituency and four in Khasi-Jaintia Hills, which make up the Shillong Lok Sabha seat held by Pala.
For the TMC, it stood to reason that it should be allowed to field its candidate in Tura and the Congress in Shillong. However, the state Congress was not having that and pushed Saleng Sangma as its choice in Tura. So peeved were the TMC that elements within it are looking to back the National People’s Party (NPP) candidate in Shillong.
Pala today explained his reasons for not trusting the TMC. He said he told the central party leadership that the TMC’s state leaders will soon join the Congress’s archenemy, the BJP. Indeed, the question of whether TMC leader Dr Mukul Sangma will or won’t join the BJP is a topic of frequent gossip. Dr Sangma was reportedly at loggerheads with Pala, which led the former to break with the Congress and join the TMC back in 2021.
“We are smart enough to see that TMC in Meghalaya is totally different and we could convince the high command not to have an alliance here,” Pala told reporters today.
He said that it is not that the Congress does not like the TMC but in Meghalaya it is wrong to have truck with them because their leaders are joining the BJP, for which, he claimed, the party has solid proof of.
According to him, TMC members in Ri-Bhoi and West Shillong are trying to get Congress leaders to join the BJP.
