Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday appointed a senior observer and six observers for the upcoming Assembly elections in the three poll-bound northeastern states – Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.
AICC General Secretary K.C. Venugopal in a communication to the party leaders of the three northeastern states said that Member of Parliament and Congress General Secretary Mukul Wasnik will be senior observer for Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.
According to the communication, senior leader Arvinder Singh Lovely and MP Abdul Khaleque would be observers for Tripura while MP Benny Behanan and former parliamentarian J.D. Seelam would be observers for Meghalaya. Francisco Sardinha and K. Jayakumar, both members of Parliament would be observers for Nagaland.
In a couple of tweets, Tripura Pradesh Congress welcomed the appointments.
The Congress, which once ruled all the three northeastern states — Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, is now not even a formidable opposition force in these states.
The grand old party has no MLA in Nagaland and Sudip Roy Barman, a former BJP minister, is now the lone party legislator in Tripura. Roy Barman who deserted the Party before the 2018 Assembly Polls and joined BJP, became a BJP MLA only to resign and return to Congress even before completing 5-year term as BJP MLA. However, Roybarma managed to win by-poll this year on Congress ticket.
Two of the five Congress MLAs in Meghalaya — Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh and Mohendro Rapsang — joined the ruling National People’s Party (NPP) on December 19 last.
According to the Meghalaya assembly record, the Congress now has three MLAs in the 60-member Meghalaya Assembly.
However, the three legislators are likely to join other parties soon.
The Congress had earlier suspended all the five party MLAs for hobnobbing with the NPP leadership, specially the Chief Minister and NPP National President Conrad K. Sangma.