Shillong, March 01: A day before vote results in Meghalaya, the Chief Minister met his Assam counterpart at midnight amid exit polls forecast of a hung assembly, people familiar with the matter said.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, who heads the National People’s Party (NPP), had decided to fight the assembly election solo, though his party and Himanta Biswa Sarma’s BJP had been running the state government together under the banner of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance.
Sangma and Sarma discussed the possibility of a post-election alliance in the hush-hush meeting between the two leaders at a hotel in Assam’s main city Guwahati, sources said.
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Sarma’s meeting with the Meghalaya Chief minister will not go unnoticed as it would lead to speculation that something is in the works, most likely an alliance.
The meeting is being downplayed as two friends catching up. “Sangma was in Guwahati last night and Sarma, his friend, came and visited him at the hotel. They had a one-to-one meeting,” as per the source.
The Assam Chief Minister heads the BJP-led North East Development Alliance, or NEDA, which announced it will not team up with either the Congress or the Trinamool Congress to form the government if such a situation arises.
Sarma on Tuesday said that apart from Meghalaya, he is confident there will be no hung assembly in Tripura and Nagaland, the two other northeast states where assembly election was held.
