North East News Agency

Only on two occasions a chief minister in Meghalaya was able to complete its full five-year term since attaining statehood in 1972.And this time it was not different either. After ruling the State for three and a half years, D. D. Lapang had to vacate the chair in favour of J. D. Rymbai.  

Lapang proposed the name of Rymbai at the CLP meeting. The choice was unanimous. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, central minister Oscar Fernandes and senior party leader Ved Prakash attended the CLP meeting as party observers oversee the leadership change process.

Earlier the dissident group in a statement accused the Chief Minister of making false promises and indulging in manipulative politics. “Once the Chief Minister said that keeping in the mind the interest of all the districts, there will be representation from each district in the Ministry. But questions were raised why West Khasi Hills was not represented and also about the yardstick, the Chief Minister chose to select 12-member team. The yardstick was never made transparent. Every time Lapang goes to Delhi, he goes with a promise of reshuffle. When he comes back, the excuse will be that the reshuffle will be after the Assembly session or elections. With the shifting statement of the Chief Minister, a common man is under the impression that all Congress MLAs are power hungry. We are not power hungry; it is the manipulation of one man. We have no more faith in the leadership of Lapang. He is making his own family to fight against each other to remain in power. Initially, we took him on face value. But he cannot befool the people all the time. In the last CLP meeting, we raised that the image of the Congress is eroding. If there were six governments before 2003, we have one government for the last three half years and there is more instability and lack of development. Making his own people fight against each other, Lapang has handicapped development. We feel that we are not doing justice to the people. We need a leader to empower the common man economically rather than playing politics at the Secretariat. We were very lenient towards Lapang despite the fact we had asked him to step down in 2004. He also made unilateral decisions concerning the extension of the former Chief Secretary and other issues. To say that we desire a reshuffle is mere simplistic approach. Lapang should practice what he preaches and he should step down as he promised through the media that he will respect the will of the majority.”

On his part, Lapang tried every trick he knew to save his chair. But he could not muster the support of his MLAs. As a result, the writing was clear on the wall from the very beginning. Lapang’s last hope was the support of party high command. Here again he failed miserably as party chief Sonia Gandhi refused to impose her will on party legislatures.But, on its part, the high command allowed the Meghalaya Chief Minister, a loyal soldier of the party to leave gracefully.

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