Shillong witnessed a dramatic turn in its politics on Saturday when Power and Water Resources Minister Metbah Lyngdoh resigned from the Meghalaya Cabinet with immediate effect, days after his party, the United Democratic Party, lost eleven of its twelve legislators to other parties.
Lyngdoh, who also leads the UDP, submitted his resignation to Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, saying that the changed political circumstances had made it impossible for him to continue as a minister in the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government.
The resignation capped a remarkable fortnight for a party that was once described as a kingmaker in Meghalaya politics. The UDP had won twelve seats in the 2023 Assembly elections and emerged as the single largest party in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills region, giving it considerable weight inside the ruling alliance. Within three years, however, that strength has evaporated almost entirely, leaving Lyngdoh as the party's only member in the sixty-seat Assembly.
Lyngdoh announced his decision after an emergency meeting of the UDP at its office in Shillong. He said he had taken the step after careful consideration of the prevailing political situation and the developments within his own party. He rejected speculation that he had been pushed out, insisting that the decision was entirely his own and had been made independently after due reflection.
"Due to the current political scenario arising in the state, where eleven MLAs of the UDP have left me as the lone MLA in the party, I decided I will not be able to continue as a Cabinet minister in the MDA government, so therefore, today I have placed my resignation to Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma," Lyngdoh said. "My resignation is effective immediately. This is the first decision of the party; other decisions will follow."
The exodus unfolded in two stages. In September, eight UDP legislators joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in New Delhi, a move the Assembly Speaker later recognised as a merger. The eight were Lahkmen Rymbui, Kyrmen Shylla, Pius Marwein, Mayralborn Syiem, Matthew Beyondstar Kurbah, Ollan Singh Suin, Balajied Kupar Synrem and Synshar Kupar Roy Lyngdoh Thabah.
Their departure lifted the BJP's tally in the Assembly from two seats to ten, giving the national party a far stronger foothold in the hill state than it had enjoyed before.
The second blow came earlier in October, when three more UDP legislators joined the National People's Party, the party led by Chief Minister Sangma. Paul Lyngdoh, Renikton Lyngdoh Tongkhar and Nujorki Sungoh moved to the NPP, and the Speaker accepted their merger on the basis of a resolution dated October 17.
Lyngdoh had earlier expelled the three from the party after they approached the Speaker, but the merger stood, taking the NPP's strength in the sixty-member House to thirty-six.
The developments have reshaped the arithmetic of Meghalaya's Assembly. The NPP, already the largest party, now commands a comfortable majority on its own, while the BJP has grown from a marginal presence into a ten-member bloc. For the UDP, the arithmetic tells a story of near-total collapse: a party that entered the Assembly with twelve members now speaks through a single voice.
Lyngdoh held a heavyweight set of portfolios. Besides power and water resources, he was in charge of taxation and textiles, departments that touch everyday life in the state, from electricity supply in remote hill districts to the trade in traditional woven cloth. His departure therefore leaves not just a political vacancy but an administrative one, and it was not immediately clear on Saturday evening who would take over the power department.
The Chief Minister's office had not publicly commented on the resignation by the evening.
The UDP leader said the party's Central Executive Committee would meet soon, likely on Tuesday, to deliberate on the developments and decide the party's future course in consultation with its leaders and office-bearers. He did not say whether the UDP would continue to support the NPP-led government or withdraw from the alliance altogether.
That question now hangs over the next meeting, and its answer will determine whether the UDP remains a partner of the government it helped to form or moves into opposition with a single legislator.
The crisis has been building for some time. Reports of discontent within the UDP over leadership and organisational questions had circulated for months, and the party's internal troubles deepened after a Cabinet reshuffle in September 2025, when Metbah Lyngdoh and Lahkmen Rymbui replaced senior UDP leaders Paul Lyngdoh and Kyrmen Shylla as the party's representatives in the state Cabinet.
Both of the replaced leaders have since left the party, one for the NPP and the other for the BJP, underlining how deep the fractures had become.
The UDP has been part of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government since 2018, and Metbah Lyngdoh, the MLA from Mairang, has led the party since September 2019. He is also a former Speaker of the Assembly, a background that gave his resignation an added symbolic weight. A politician who once presided over the House now finds himself its party's only occupant on the UDP benches.
For Meghalaya, the episode raises questions that go beyond one party's fortunes. The anti-defection framework allows mergers when two-thirds of a legislature party agree, and the Speaker's recognition of both moves has been central to the story. Supporters of the defectors argue that legislators are entitled to seek a more stable political home, while critics of such mass movements say they hollow out the mandate voters gave to a party.
The UDP's experience, losing eleven of twelve members in a matter of weeks, is an extreme illustration of that debate.
What happens next will be watched closely in Shillong and beyond. If the UDP's executive committee decides to withdraw support from the government, the move would be largely symbolic, since the NPP now holds a majority on its own. If it stays, the party would remain an ally with a single MLA and no minister in the Cabinet, a shadow of its former self.
Either way, the resignation of Metbah Lyngdoh marks the end of the UDP's role as a power broker in Meghalaya politics, at least for now, and the beginning of a difficult search for relevance by a party that once shaped governments in the state.
(Reporting based on The Shillong Times, The Tribune and NDTV.)