Former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Agitok Sangma was arguably the first leader from the eight-State northeast with a pan-India appeal. His son Conrad Kongkal Sangma did become a parliamentarian in 2016 after winning the Tura Lok Sabha seat, which his father held from 1997 until his death, with two breaks in between. But he was quick in assessing his strengths and focused on making the National People’s Party (NPP) a force to reckon with in the northeast through an “alliance of convenience” with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which his father had initiated. Successful electoral moves and expansion of the party’s footprint in the region helped Mr. Conrad emerge from the shadows of his father.
Expanding base
The NPP won only two seats in the 2013 Meghalaya election, contested under Purno Sangma’s leadership. Taking over as the NPP president after his father’s death in March 2016, the onus was on Conrad Sangma to expand the party’s base beyond his home turf — the western half of Meghalaya comprising the Garo Hills.
The 2017 Manipur election gave him the opportunity to test the waters and take the NPP’s friendship with the BJP forward. The NPP won four of the 20 seats it contested and helped the BJP, which had won 10 seats fewer than the majority mark of 31, form a coalition government headed by Nongthombam Biren Singh. Under his stewardship, the party also won five seats in the 2019 Arunachal Pradesh election and backed the BJP government headed by Pema Khandu.
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The Manipur experiment paid dividends after a hung verdict in the 2018 Meghalaya election. The BJP was among four parties that aligned with the NPP to stop the Congress, the single-largest party with 21 seats, from forming the government. Mr. Conrad’s first term as the Chief Minister was not always smooth. He weathered bursts of violence over an unresolved conflict between Dalit Sikhs and the local people in the State capital Shillong, communal tensions triggered by protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, a public outcry after the killing of a former extremist and miscreants attacking pedestrians during a rally demanding jobs. He managed to tide over accusations of large-scale corruption in power, education and other sectors, besides sitting over illegal coal mining and transportation.
Full-term CM
However, he pulled off something deemed difficult in a State used to fractured mandates and President’s Rule — completing a term. He also defied naysayers to not only take charge for the second successive term but also help the NPP improve its tally from 19 five years ago to 26 this year.
After the election results, the BJP and the other allies-turned-rivals lost no time in rekindling the friendship for the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance 2.0, though the Congress and the Trinamool Congress made an unsuccessful bid to form an alternative government with regional parties.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with newly sworn-in Chief Minister Conrad Sangma look on, at a ceremony in Shillong on Tuesday, March 7, 2023. | Photo Credit: PTI
Mr. Conrad, an MBA who studied at the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania and the Imperial College in the U.K., learnt the political ropes as his father’s campaign manager in the 1990s. But his electoral journey began with a failure — he lost his first Assembly election in 2004 by 182 votes. The loss, those close to him say, primed him for a calculated approach to elections by weighing his options and perfecting the art of balancing between the interest of the NPP and that of allies, primarily the BJP.
The balancing act saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah attend his swearing-in ceremony days after calling Meghalaya one of the most corrupt States, during the BJP’s campaign. Mr. Conrad has also honed the skill of attacking the BJP without going overboard and taking a backseat on certain occasions.
Maintaining a balance has also seen him become more acceptable across the Khasi and Jaintia Hills — the two regions of Meghalaya temperamentally different from the Garo Hills — and find time for holidaying with his doctor wife and two daughters from time to time.
