Working president of the beleaguered Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee, Pynshngain Syiem MDC, has been temporarily appointed as the chairman of the Shillong City Congress Committee following the suspension of Mawlai MLA Process Sawkmie. Sawkmie and the four other party legislators in the Assembly were suspended after pledging their support to the state government.
“We will be meeting all party workers and completing the organization in all the blocks under Shillong city so that we can appoint a new president for Shillong city,” Syiem told reporters today.
Informing that a few blocks are unorganized, he said that they will reach out to all the blocks before the second week of March and strengthen and revamp the party at the block level.
Meanwhile, the MPCC has yet to receive any response from the suspended Congress MLAs. Syiem said that the next course of action will be taken by the Congress high command, the All India Congress Committee.
Concerning the decision of the Congress MDC for Nongpoh, Balajied Rani, to support the ruling alliance in the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, Syiem said that the matter has not been discussed as the Congress leader in the KHADC has not received any such intimation from Rani.
While it is difficult but not impossible, as has been seen within the Congress already, for MLAs to jump from one party to another, there is no such trouble faced by MDCs as there is no anti- defection law in the council.
Nevertheless, Syiem, who has party-hopped in the past himself, maintained that losing an MLA or MDC does not mean that all of that persons supporters will also shift their allegiance.
“It all depends on the potentiality and capability of a candidate and, going by the records, not less than 50 percent of the representatives who join another party lose in the [subsequent] election,” he said, adding that a big organization like the Congress with support at the grassroots should have no problem at all.
He further predicted that the Congress, as in 2018, will be one of the largest parties in 2023, along with the National People’s Party and United Democratic Party.
