The Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government will finalise its consensus candidate for the Speaker’s post on September 4.
The core committee of the MDA government headed by deputy chief minister Prestone Tynsong met on Thursday and started the discussion is on who should be the candidate for the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly’s top post.
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Health minister A L Hek, tourism minister Metbah Lyngdoh, and sports minister Banteidor Lyngdoh who are members of the core committee, attended the meeting.
Tynsong told reporters that the Thursday’s meeting was only a warm up of the core committee.
“The Core Committee will again hold its meeting on September 4 to discuss about probable candidates, and on the same day, the name of a consensus candidate would be presented before the MDA meeting for approval,” Tynsong said.
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The MDA meeting will be held on September 4 at 7 pm.
Tynsong said that partners of the MDA government are still consulting among them and come up with probable names for the Speaker’s post.
He said the election of new Speaker will take place in the upcoming Autumn Session of the Assembly.
The six-day session will commence from September 6 to 13.
The Speaker post fell vacant following the demise of speaker and veteran MLA from Shella constituency, Donkupar Roy.
Roy was the president of the United Democratic Party (UDP) and held the speaker post from March 12, 2018 till his death on July 12.
Earlier, the UDP claimed that the speaker post should go to the party since it was held by Donkupar.
However, the other partners of the MDA government decided that the post should not be decided by the UDP alone, and the core committee was formed to recommend the name of a consensus candidate.
The MDA government made up by the NPP, UDP, PDF, HSPDP, BJP, NCP and Independents has a total of 40 MLAs.
The opposition Congress has 19 MLAs.
The Meghalaya legislative assembly has 60 members but currently has 59 members after the death of the speaker.