The National People Party (NPP) today told the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to get real and discuss their numbers in Meghalaya rather than engaging in making irrelevant statements.
BJP legislator for South Shillong Sanbor Shullai yesterday stated that it would be useless for the people of Khasi-Jaintia Hills to send candidates of other political parties to Parliament from the Shillong seat since the BJP is going to come back to power at the Centre at the upcoming general election.
Lyngdoh is the NPP’s candidate for the Shillong seat. The BJP has yet to make its choice.
“Let me not engage and distract my campaign with such irrelevant statements. It does not matter what a political party or representative of a political party thinks. Let’s get real. Look at your numbers in the state and discuss all that,” Lyngdoh said.
This is the first time that the NPP will contest the Shillong Lok Sabha seat. The party was only founded in 2012 and focused on the Tura seat in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019.
Most of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance, which includes the BJP and NPP, are planning on contesting the Shillong seat on their own. This marks a change from 2019 when only the BJP and United Democratic Party (UDP) contested the seat, though they were both well behind the Congress Party, which won comfortably. In 2019 Shullai had been the BJP’s candidate but an underwhelming campaign saw the saffron party take less than 10 percent of the vote.
It is a common sight to see MDA members attack each other on the campaign trail, which seemed to annoy Lyngdoh.
“Right now members of political parties in the MDA coalition must not just speak because they have been asked to speak. [They should] speak sensibly,” she said. “You may be from a political party but if you do not have the calibre and the experience, what are you going to say there (in Parliament)? I have the calibre and the point is we need to test if the people actually want me to go there. Elections are coming and we will know on the day of the results.”
