Lok Sabha Polls 2024 | Face-off: Vincent H Pala vs Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh

The two are contesting from Shillong.

Three-time Lok Sabha member from the Shillong Lok Sabha constituency, Vincent H. Pala is among the few strong faces of Congress in Northeast India, where the party has been facing an electoral downfall since 2014. The 56-year-old leader is the president of Meghalaya unit of the Congress, which could win only five out of the 60 Assembly seats in the 2023 Assembly elections and saw many senior leaders quitting the party. A civil engineer, Pala served as a Union minister of state for water resources and minority affairs under the Manmohan Singh government. He is seeking re-election for the fourth-term and is pitted against his former colleague in Congress Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh. Pala says his developmental works in the last 15 years will make even the BJP workers to vote for him this time. He claims that the Centre put the ED and Income Tax Department after him, but still, he won't join the BJP. "I trust and love the people of Meghalaya, I know I am here because of the people, and with that in mind, the people will vote for me," he says.

Five-time Congress MLA and a former teacher of mass communication, Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh was the only female legislator in the 60-member Meghalaya Legislative Assembly between 2008 and 2013. A PhD, 59-year-old Ampareen quit Congress and joined the ruling National People's Party (NPP) ahead of the Assembly elections in 2023. Ampareen and four other MLAs were expelled from the grand old party for openly supporting the NPP-led government. She is now a cabinet minister in the Conrad Sangma-led coalition government. The NPP hopes that it can win the Shillong Lok Sabha seat for the first time through Ampareen. Conrad's sister Agatha K Sangma is the other woman NPP candidate in the fray. She is contesting the Tura Lok Sabha seat.

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