National People’s Party (NPP) president and Meghalaya chief minister Conrad Sangma will formally launch the party’s Assam unit at a public meeting here on Wednesday.

On Sunday, Conrad appointed Dilip Bora as the party’s state convener. Bora, a retired IPS officer, was with the AGP.

“The state unit of our party will be formally launched by our national president at a public meeting at Ganesh Udyan at Dispur on Wednesday,” Bora told The Telegraph.

Bora said apart from having its government in Meghalaya, the NPP currently has MLAs in four other northeastern states — Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

“We are now working towards having our presence in the Assam Assembly,” he said.

He said that for the first time, the NPP will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Assam.

“We have set a target to field candidates in all the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state. However, the selection of candidates is yet to be done,” he said.

The NCP is riding high on the rise in popularity of Conrad Sangma in Assam due to the bold stand taken by him against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.

The Meghalaya chief minister was accorded a hero’s welcome at the LGBI airport here last month for his role in stalling the tabling of the bill in the Rajya Sabha.

Conrad, who took the lead in uniting political parties in the Northeast against the bill, was hailed for his efforts.

From the North East Students Organisation (Neso), the apex students’ organisation of the Northeast, to the AGP, which severed ties with the BJP over the bill, everyone appreciated Conrad for leading from the front.

The movement against the bill got an impetus when Conrad convened a meeting of 10 regional parties, including six constituents of North East Democratic Alliance (Neda), a BJP-led political platform of non-Congress parties in the region, and the Janata Dal United here in January.

Bora said all the major political parties appeared to be polarised but the NPP wants to represent people belonging all communities, religions and castes and offer an alternative to the people.

“Our objective is to become a national party with a regional outlook. We want restoration of federal principles in Indian democracy to have stronger states with a unifying centre,” he said.

The NPP was born in Manipur in the early nineties and had three MLAs at that time. Over the years, the party became dormant. It was revived when late P. A. Sangma came out of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and formed the Meghalaya unit of the NPP on August 24, 2012.