But he is not exactly waiting to find out if the heavens are with him or not this time when he has quit the Congress, staking his political future. He says he has been, in fact, working very hard and is reminded of his debut as a Congress candidate in 1977 when he had toured the Garo Hills extensively, to defeat his APHLC opponent Moody Marak by a margin of 45,000 votes. Since then he has travelled a long way, becoming a Union Minister and then the Lok Sabha Speaker. On the way, he has won from Tura six times, beating his nearest rival in 1998 by 1,80,000 votes.

That has not made him complacent since this time he is on his own and without the party symbol of hand. The NCP symbol is a clock and the Congress hopes rest partly on the confusion in the electorate over Sangma's symbol. Sangma has toured all the 24 assemblysegments and explained to the voters that the table clock is his new symbol.

After a quick breakfast, Sangma leaves his residence daily at 7 in the morning for villages in the remote hills with his wife and some NCP workers to address about 12 public meetings.

On the last day of campaigning on Thursday, he is wearing a striped cotton shirt and sky blue trousers with a red-striped gamcha around his neck. A cowboy hat, sunglasses and a sandal are in place. He is scheduled to address 10 public meetings in Chokpot.

At Kenegre village, he breaks into a dance, swaying to the beating drums as an amused crowd looks on. His supporters join him in the Wangala dance. You can trust the former Lok Sabha Speaker to spring such surprises on you, but it takes little time for him to get down to business.

The speech lasts hardly 10 minutes and Sangma knows his script. Sonia may spare him while campaigning but his revolt rests on her foreign origin. So, he tells the people that this election is actually a referendum onwhether a foreign-born person like Sonia Gandhi should be allowed to be India's Prime Minister or not. He says the choice is between a Congress Party which is projecting its foreign-born president Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister and an India-born Prime Minister.

Neither does he pick up any local issue, nor does his audience raise any, like drinking water, electricity or roads. Sangma claims the villagers are not bothering him with their problems because they have seen for themselves the development that he has brought about in all these years. These elections will prove whether Garo Hills is a Cong bastion, as the Congress is claiming, or Sangma's pocket borough.

Sangma's campaign manager is his 21-year-old foreign-educated son, Conrad Sangma, who has taken on the role of his campaign manager. When he is not out campaigning with his father, Conrad is busy handling party matters in the NCP office besides chalking out programmes for the next day. Conrad claims that 80 per cent of the youths are with hisfather, whom he describes as the undisputed king of Garo Hills.