UDP-BJP Switch: Party Leader Lahkmen Rymbui Says ‘Possibility’ Cannot Be Ruled Out
Meghalaya’s coalition politics has entered one of its most unsettled phases since the 2023 Assembly election. Reports that a large section of the United Democratic Party (UDP) is exploring a switch to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have moved from private conversation in Shillong to public debate across the state. At the centre of the speculation is Education Minister and Amlarem MLA Lahkmen Rymbui, a senior UDP figure whose name has repeatedly appeared among legislators said to be in contact with the BJP. Party president Metbah Lyngdoh insists every MLA remains with the UDP. BJP leaders refuse to confirm a deal but will not close the door. Between those two positions sits the only statement that still holds: a UDP-to-BJP realignment cannot be ruled out.
The numbers explain why the story has gripped the capital. The UDP has 12 MLAs in the 60-member House and is the second-largest partner in the National People’s Party (NPP)-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government. The BJP has two. The Trinamool Congress has four. Under the anti-defection law, a group that wants to merge without losing membership must take two-thirds of its legislative party with it. For the UDP, that threshold is eight. Nine names have circulated in reports over the last week. If even eight of them move, the UDP would be reduced to a rump and the BJP would jump from two seats to double digits—its largest footprint in the Khasi-Jaintia hills since it first entered the Assembly.
Those nine names, according to multiple accounts published at the end of August, are Paul Lyngdoh, Lahkmen Rymbui, Mayralborn Syiem, Ollan Sing Suin, Matthew Beyondstar Kurbah, Kyrmen Shylla, Synshar Kupar Lyngdoh Thabah, Pius Marwein and Balajied Synrem. Five of them—including Rymbui—were reported to have been in Guwahati for talks involving BJP Northeast in-charge Sambit Patra and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The other four were said to be in Kolkata. The next stop, sources told local newspapers, was New Delhi and a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president Nitin Nabin.
Rymbui’s presence in that list is politically significant. He is not a backbencher. He holds Education, Revenue and Disaster Management, Information and Public Relations, and Law. He represents a border constituency in West Jaintia Hills and has been in the Cabinet in more than one Conrad Sangma ministry. If a minister of that rank is even being named in merger talks, the rest of the UDP cannot treat the story as noise. That is the sense in which the possibility cannot be ruled out. No public recording of Rymbui announcing a switch has surfaced. The UDP president later placed him in Shillong, not Guwahati. But the fact that his name is in the conversation at all is what has unsettled the party.
The discontent did not appear overnight. Sources who spoke to The Shillong Times traced it to the Cabinet overhaul of September 2025, when eight ministers were dropped, including Paul Lyngdoh and Kyrmen Shylla of the UDP. Several UDP legislators, those sources said, learned of the changes at the last moment and were given no internal discussion. They came to believe the NPP wanted to recast its own representation and used the UDP to share the political cost. Metbah Lyngdoh retained a Cabinet berth while colleagues were dropped. That decision, the same accounts said, left a mark.
The grievance then widened. After the NPP’s tally rose to 33, some UDP MLAs complained that NPP functionaries were taking block-level decisions and awarding contracts in their constituencies without consulting the sitting legislator. A few even discussed walking out of the alliance. They did not, in part because they judged that the UDP president lacked the leverage to confront the dominant partner. A turn toward the BJP is being read in that light: a regional party seeking a national ally so it is no longer treated as a junior afterthought.
UDP office-bearers have pushed back hard. General secretary Titosstarwell Chyne said no legislator had gone on record to any newspaper or channel saying they would join the BJP. The reports, he argued, were being spread to weaken the party in the Assembly. Asked whether every MLA was still with the UDP, he answered “almost,” then stressed that the majority remained intact. He dismissed talk that Metbah Lyngdoh or Rymbui would be dropped from the Cabinet, saying any reshuffle was the Chief Minister’s prerogative and that Conrad Sangma had not informed the UDP of such a plan. He also said the party president had not gone to Delhi; Lyngdoh had returned from a meeting in Khliehriat and gone home after a delay near Mawryngkneng.
Lyngdoh himself was more categorical a day later. He said he had spoken to all 12 MLAs directly, not through intermediaries, and that none had told him they were joining the BJP. “There is no problem in UDP as of now,” he said. Speculation, he added, would remain speculation. He rejected reports of a Delhi negotiation and of camps in Guwahati and Kolkata. Four MLAs who travelled to Kolkata, he said, did so for personal business. Other legislators, including Rymbui, Ollan Sing Suin and Matthew Kurbah, were in Shillong. He also denied discontent over his leadership.
The BJP has been careful not to claim a victory it has not announced. State minister Sanbor Shullai neither confirmed nor denied the reports. “We have tried our best to talk and make people understand. I have hope and time will tell,” he said. The party’s doors, he added, were open “24 hours” for MLAs, MDCs, workers and the public. Senior BJP MLA A.L. Hek said any merger decision would rest with the central leadership and that the party’s present focus was the 2028 Assembly election.
That 2028 horizon is the real stake. Absorbing eight or nine UDP legislators would give the BJP organisation and faces in the Khasi and Jaintia hills that it has historically lacked. It would also force a recast of Cabinet berths. Sources have already spoken of a larger ministerial share for the BJP, including talk of a deputy chief minister’s post. Conrad Sangma can still run the House with a smaller set of allies. Whether he would accept a suddenly enlarged BJP inside MDA-II is another question. The NPP has 33 seats. It does not need nine extra BJP MLAs to survive. It may, however, need calm in the coalition if it wants a clean run into the next election.
There is a further complication. The same strain has touched the Regional Democratic Alliance. The HSPDP had wanted the UDP to approach D.R.L. Nonglait for the Shillong parliamentary by-election before the NPP did. The UDP named V.G.K. Kynta instead. That choice, sources said, widened the gap between the two regional parties. A UDP split would not only shrink one partner. It would rearrange the entire regional space that the Voice of the People Party has been trying to occupy.
For voters, the immediate issue is simpler. No MLA has stood before a camera and said he is leaving. No BJP functionary has produced a list. The anti-defection arithmetic is public. The names in circulation are public. The denials are public. So is the BJP’s invitation. Until one of those facts changes, Meghalaya politics will keep returning to the same line: a switch from the UDP to the BJP is not a settled event, but it is no longer a story that can be dismissed as rumour alone.
Rymbui’s own silence is part of that uncertainty. As long as a sitting Cabinet minister from the UDP can be named in merger reports without a clear, on-record rebuttal from him, the possibility remains live. That is why the headline has stuck. The party says it is intact. The BJP says time will tell. Between those two sentences, Meghalaya is waiting to see whether nine legislators were only exploring options—or whether they were already on the road to Delhi.
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