Shillong, Nov 2: National People’s Party (NPP) national president and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma has attributed the win of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) in the just concluded bye-elections, results of which were announced on Tuesday, were for the work that this government has done.
He said the people have put their trust in them because of the MDA government’s agendas and its work in the last 3.5 years. “Today we have won as a government in all the three seats,” he said while talking to reporters after the results for the bypolls were announced here on Tuesday.
MDA won all the three Assembly seats that went for bye-polls on October 30 – Mawryngkneng, Mawphlang and Rajabala, and the results were declared on Tuesday. The NPP won two seats – Rajabala and Mawryngkneng, while UDP won the Mawphlang seat.
The People have made their choice by ensuring victory for our candidates Sh. Abdus Saleh in Rajabala constituency & Sh. Pyniaid Sing Syiem in Mawryngkneng constituency. This is a victory of our people.
My gratitude to all those who contributed in this big win! Long live NPP! pic.twitter.com/kmcbRfGXQW
— Conrad Sangma (@SangmaConrad) November 2, 2021
The NPP chief also categorically stressed that while opposition Congress levelled numerous allegations on the government, party and its candidates during the campaigning for the bye-elections, his party did not speak against the opposition Congress.
“I had said we would like to work and play the politics of development, politics of progressive movement, election and a campaign of issues of the people and that’s how we have been doing it,” he mentioned.
Voting for the government
He was also grateful to the people for ‘voting for the government’.
“I would like to thank the people of all the three constituencies specially Mawryngkneng and Rajabala for having put their faith and trust in the NPP. Also, I would like to thank the voters of Mawphlang who have also voted in large numbers for the NPP and have elected the candidate of one of the coalition partners in the government, the UDP which is a direct mandate towards the government itself,” he said.
NPP wins Congress bastion
Sangma further stressed that the bypolls were tough for the party as they were hoping to win the Congress bastion – Rajabala and Mawryngkneng, where the performance of NPP has been poor in the past. But the hard work of the party workers paid off and the performance of the party was remarkable as it raked up over 11,000 votes in its favour.
“These two seats the NPP has won were seats that have been traditionally won by the opposition Congress. In both the seats you have seen in the previous elections, the NPP used to come third or fourth in the rank.”
“In fact in 2013, the NPP managed to get only 450 votes in Rajabala, in 2018 we got 4,800 votes and in this election we have crossed 11,823 votes. So a jump of almost closed to 7,000 votes in Rajabala which was a huge task, it was almost double the votes we got in 2018. Similarly in Mawryngkneng it was the same,” he said.
