Meghalaya heading for leadership change again

Shillong:Meghalaya is heading for another leadership change, just a month and a half after rebel Congress leader J.D. Rymbai was sworn in chief minister replacing his mentor D.D. Lapang. Some 20 of the 29 Congress legislators in the 60-member house are demanding that Rymbai be replaced with Lapang as chief minister once again as the former had failed to meet the aspirations of the people during his 42-day rule. The dissident lawmakers led by Lapang are currently camping in New Delhi to lobby with the central leadership to effect a reversal of role. "The same set of legislators who made me chief minister is now backstabbing me," Rymbai said. He was sworn in as chief minister June 15 after Congress legislators revolted against Lapang for allegedly failing to deal with sensitive social and development issues. "If the party high command wants me to relinquish I have no problems," Rymbai said. Loyalists of the chief minister said it was too early to judge the performance. "There is dissidence no doubt, but I think these are people who did not get ministerial berths and hence are raising the banner of revolt in a little over a month," Meghalaya Home Minister R.G. Lyngdoh told IANS. "There are, of course, some within the cabinet as well who are shouting for a change and this is because they fear that skeletons may come out of the closet if the present chief minister is allowed to continue." In the 60-member Meghalaya legislature, the Congress has 29 legislators and is backed by 14 other regional party lawmakers in running the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government since the last elections in 2003. Meghalaya goes to the poll in 17 months. The northeastern state is known for its hop-skip-and-jump politics with politicians switching parties at the drop of a hat. Political instability is the hallmark in Meghalaya - the mountainous state has seen six different governments with varied combinations of political parties, resulting in four chief ministers in the five years between 1998 and the last assembly elections in 2003. There have been just two occasions when a chief minister was able to complete its full five-year term since Meghalaya attained statehood in 1972.