Photo Courtesy: India Today Group
Shillong: Meghalaya Congress president Vincent H. Pala threw a jab at the BJP on Friday, September 25. He claimed the party faces a reckoning in the 2028 Assembly elections. The BJP currently holds 10 seats in the 60-member Assembly. This jump happened after eight United Democratic Party MLAs switched sides just two days prior. The BJP and UDP both sit within the ruling National People's Party-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance.
Pala questioned if these shifts mean anything at the ballot box. He pointed out that the BJP grabbed only two seats and 9.3 percent of the vote during the 2023 election. The Congress took five seats and 13.2 percent of the vote back then. That party now holds zero seats in the Assembly. Four members moved to the NPP, and the fifth took a seat as a Congress MP.
Pala dismissed the BJP's growth as mere political opportunism. He argued that grabbing legislators does not build a genuine mandate from voters. "The real test will be in 2028. They might have got MLAs but whether they will get the mandate of the people or not, that we are yet to see," Pala said. He added that the Congress plans to rally voters who oppose the BJP. The former Union minister also blasted the BJP for poaching from its own allies. "We condemn the way in which the BJP has done this to their own friends, to their own allies," he said.
Updated at 26th September 2026 at 1:48am
Beyond the floor of the Assembly, the party took to the streets on Friday. Pala led a protest from Congress Bhavan to the Additional Secretariat, where party members torched an effigy of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The Congress demanded Kumar resign, face a commission of inquiry, and be arrested, citing alleged irregularities in electoral rolls across Haryana, Maharashtra, and West Bengal.
Pala claimed Kumar bulldozed 14 objections raised by the two other Election Commissioners over the past 10 months to benefit the BJP. He accused the Centre of rigging the system through legal amendments and claimed data manipulation is being orchestrated by the CEC's office in Delhi. The Election Commission has maintained that its decisions, including the recent Special Intensive Revision of rolls, were unanimous.
Updated at 26th September 2026 at 9:47am
Pala took his rhetoric a step further by accusing the BJP of stealing the mandate of honest tribal people. He warned that the current political shell game will eventually turn on the ruling party itself. According to Pala, the NPP currently finds the situation amusing while the UDP suffers, but he predicted that the BJP will eventually target NPP MLAs next. He argued that the real objective of the BJP is to dismantle its own allies, claiming the party has already employed similar tactics in Odisha and Bihar and against the Shiv Sena.
Pala described the BJP expansion as an aggressive play to hijack the electoral process rather than a standard political strategy. He signaled that the Congress is bracing for a future that pits his party directly against the BJP and vowed to fight the trend of political defections with full force in the next cycle.
Updated at 26th September 2026 at 10:01am
Pala confirmed that the state-level rally is just the beginning. He told supporters that the party plans to escalate the pressure by organizing similar protests at the district level. He noted that the state unit is awaiting guidance from the Congress Working Committee on how to further challenge the commission's current leadership.
The protest momentum stems from recent internal reports revealing that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally recorded their dissent 14 times over the last 10 months. These objections specifically targeted the execution and oversight of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, fueling the Congress' claims that the current CEC bypassed his colleagues to push through contentious decisions.
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