Leader of the opposition Mukul Sangma claimed that chief minister Conrad K. Sangma had been a "puppet" selected by Delhi after Meghalaya's ruling National People's Party (NPP) announced it will run alone in the Assembly election scheduled for next year.
The coalition administration under Conrad Sangma, who is also the NPP president, includes the BJP. In the 2018 Assembly elections, Meghalaya produced a splintered mandate with the Congress emerging as the largest party, just ahead of the NPP, a partner of the BJP at the centre and in Manipur. Later, the BJP joined forces with a number of other parties to create the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA), which thereafter became the state's administration.
On March 29 of this year, Assam and Meghalaya signed an agreement in New Delhi to resolve their five-decade-old border dispute in six of the 12 contested locations that frequently caused tension between the two states. The Union home minister hailed the signing as a "historic day" for the North-eastern region.
To protect our people's, tribes', and culture's best interests as well as those of our children and future generations, we must cooperate. According to Mukul Sangma, the current proxy-BJP government is ineffective at upholding the distinctiveness of our identity.
People will vote for change in the upcoming year, he declared, because a "divisive force from outside came in and created an unholy alliance."
Prior to that, on January 29, the two neighbours to the northeast signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to address the boundary issue in those six places in the first phase. 66 acres of land in the Ri-Bhoi district, according to claims made by Meghalaya's opposition chief whip George B. Lyngdoh, were ceded to Assam by the state administration.
Conrad Sangma was allegedly convinced to sign the border deal with Assam, a state that is governed by the BJP, by Shah, according to Mukul Sangma, a former chief minister who joined the Trinamool Congress last year along with 11 other Congress MLAs.