Meghalaya CM meets Himanta ahead of counting

Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma met Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma in Guwahati ahead of the counting of votes for the assembly elections, sources said on Wednesday.

Sarma, who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party-led North East Development Alliance (NEDA), met Sangma at a hotel in Guwahati on Tuesday night, they said.

"Sangma was in Guwahati last night and Sarma, his friend, came and visited him at the hotel. They had a one-to-one meeting," a source told PTI.

The meeting comes amid exit polls predicting a hung assembly in Meghalaya with Sangma's National People's Party (NPP) emerging as the single largest party in the assembly elections, the polling for which was held on Monday while the votes will be counted on Thursday.

The BJP and NPP ran the government in Meghalaya for the last five years as a part of the NPP-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) but the two parties fought the elections on their own.

On Tuesday evening, Sarma claimed that there will be no hung assembly in either Tripura, Nagaland or Meghalaya, and the BJP and its partners will form governments with an absolute majority in all three states.

No NEDA members will enter into any alliance with either the Congress or the TMC, he claimed, adding that the next Meghalaya chief minister will be decided after considering the number of seats won by the BJP.