Meghalaya: Experience as father's 'campaign manager' helped Conrad Sangma win NPP's poll battle

A total of 13 parties contested the polls this time in Meghalaya, but the results decisively favoured the NPP

The National People's Party (NPP), founded by former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma in 2012, emerged as the single largest party in the recent Meghalaya elections by winning 26 seats and leads the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA 2.0) government that took oath on March 7.

P A Sangma's son Conrad K Sangma, who took charge of NPP after his father's demise in 2016, became the CM for the second consecutive term on Tuesday. In the 2018 elections, the NPP's tally jumped from two in 2013 to 19. The NPP had emerged as the second biggest party and Conrad managed to stitch the MDA, denying Congress its third straight term, despite the grand old party winning 21 seats. Conrad got the BJP, UDP, HSPDP and a few other local parties on board and completed the five year tenure without much hiccups. This time too, Conrad stitched a 2018-like coalition and became the CM again.

Many within the NPP, however, said this election was tougher given the fact that the homegrown party was fighting against anti-incumbency and the aggressive TMC, which got prominent leaders like former CM Mukul Sangma on their side.

"It is the love of the people and the trust in our work in the past five years that helped us win," Conrad said soon after the results of the Assembly elections were announced on March 2. Many within the party and those assisting NPP's campaign this time, however, said it was Conrad's experience as a "campaign manager" of his late father P A Sangma in the 2013 Assembly polls and in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that helped him lead a "strategic campaign" for winning the battle in Meghalaya this time.

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"Although he studied in colleges in the UK, Conrad kept the relations with his roots in Meghalaya intact. He was closely associated with his father's campaigns and so he knows what strategy will work. He constantly guided us on how to work out the campaigns, which issues to highlight in which area, which language or dialect to be used in speeches region-wise and how to highlight the developmental works to counter the promises by the Opposition parties," said Anant Tiwari of Showtime Consulting, a private firm, which Conrad hired for NPP's campaign this time.

Tiwari, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, was part of a 14 month-long campaign by the NPP.

"Conrad knows micro-management of campaigning in a small state like Meghalaya, where each constituency has just 30,000 to 35,000 voters. Elections are fought on many sub-regional, community specific issues in Meghalaya and different strategies are required for different regions and communities. The campaign strategy used in a state like UP or Assam, where a constituency has 1.50 lakh to two lakh voters, will not work in Meghalaya," said Tiwari.

The NPP's campaigns focused more on Garo Hills, from where Conrad hails and an area having 24 out of 60 Assembly constituencies, and the NPP managed to win 18 of them. Meanwhile, NPP leaders belonging to Khasi and Jaintia tribes focused more on the Khasi and Jaintia Hills areas, respectively.

"Candidate selection was completed way before the actual elections, which helped the leaders in reaching out to the electorate for a longer duration."

After schooling from St Columbia's School, New Delhi, Conrad received a bachelor's degree in business administration in entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He later did an MBA in finance from Imperial College, London.

"He understands the requirement of the youths and women and so focussed more on entrepreneurship, skill development and formed more self-help-groups to create jobs for the women. Our focus on such works in the past five years helped us counter the promises by the Opposition parties, particularly by TMC," Tiwari said.

A total of 13 parties contested the polls this time against each other. Most of the parties also hired professional firms to push their campaigns in the elections. IPAC, the firm founded by Prashant Kishore, was managing campaigns for the TMC, the BJP took help from ABM (Association of Brilliant Minds) and Design Box, while another firm assisted Congress. Despite these efforts, however, the TMC and Congress bagged only five seats each this time while BJP managed to retain its 2018 tally of two.

"Conrad's team management capacity and ability as a leader of the coalition in the past five years helped him get UDP, HSPDP and BJP again on board," another NPP leader said.