Meghalaya: Kharlukhi Says VPP Has Replaced UDP as Regional Force in Khasi-Jaintia Hills

CORRESPONDENT

SHILLONG: Former National People’s Party (NPP) state president and former Rajya Sabha MP W.R. Kharlukhi cautioned that the party’s growing strength in the Meghalaya Assembly did not necessarily guarantee electoral support, saying its performance in the last two parliamentary elections placed it at the “danger level”.

Kharlukhi’s remarks came as the NPP’s Assembly strength rose to 36, while the United Democratic Party (UDP), which won 12 seats in the 2023 Assembly election, was reduced to a single MLA following two mergers involving 11 legislators.

“I don’t predict but looking at the barometer of the last parliamentary elections I think NPP are in the danger level,” he said, pointing to the difference between the party’s Assembly strength and its parliamentary performance. Kharlukhi said the decline of the UDP did not signify the collapse of regional politics in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills, arguing that the Voice of the People’s Party (VPP) had occupied the space previously held by the UDP. “The place of the United Democratic Party has been taken by Voice of the People’s Party, in the last parliamentary election,” he said.

He said the political situation differed in the Garo Hills, where he believed regional parties had lost ground and the contest was between two national parties. Kharlukhi declined to predict whether the UDP could recover before the 2028 Assembly election, but noted that the NPP itself had risen from just two MLAs in 2013 to forming the government in 2018. “In Meghalaya politics … even with 48 MLAs, the government collapse, that is Meghalaya politics,” he said, cautioning against assuming that a large Assembly majority guaranteed political stability.

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