Sangma jumps out of the car and flashes his ready smile, greets his supporters with a warm handshake or a hug and heads for a makeshift dais to address small gatherings of ardent followers, ranging from school children to octogenarians.

But for this former Lok sabha speaker, hailing from Tura in the East Garo Hill district, winning the coming election will be a real test, though not because he is up against any formidable opponent. This is the first time the people of Tura parliamentary constituency-where he has won six consecutive times since 1977-would have to mark their ballot against a symbol other than the Congress party's hand toelect Sangma.

Sangma is a nominee of the fledgling Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which he founded jointly with Sharad Pawar after they were expelled from the Congress for questioning party president Sonia Gandhi's prime ministerial ambitions on the ground that she is foreign-born. The NCP symbol is a clock.

Candid as he is, Sangma concedes that never before in the past six parliamentary elections did he have to undertake such an extensive tour of his constituency.

"The elderly voters cannot reconcile to the fact that I have changed parties and with it my earlier symbol of a hand is no longer there. When any of my leaders goes to campaign on my behalf, the elderly voters think somebody had come to mislead them," Sangma told IANS.

"Now I have managed to convince them that my symbol is the clock and not the hand." "I am not fighting this election to win. I am fighting the polls to win with a margin more than last time," Sangma says while preparing to leave for another venue.

His popularity andcharisma are beyond doubt. "Just see those people in front of BJP office, all of them donning caps embossed with BJP's lotus, waving and cheering at me," Sangma points out even as he asks his driver to slow down so he could respond to their gesture.

In between his campaign meetings, Sangma grabs a quick lunch of rice, smoked crab, chilly pork and pickles before making his onward journey through insurgent-infested areas to the next venue. "You can see the village market closed as all of them have gone to my next meeting venue," Sangma points out as his car swings into a remote village to cheers of `Purno Sangma Zindabad (Long live Purno Sangma)'. "The clock will tick fast and the hand will from now on move anti-clockwise," Sangma says with a grin, taking a swipe at the Congress party.

Known for his crowd-pulling abilities, Sangma is a much sought after man among his party's candidates in the northeast and even outside this region. On polling day in Tura, September 25, Sangma would cast his vote early andthen hop into a chartered helicopter to campaign for party candidates in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal.

He hopes to address some 40 meetings until October 1, the day the campaign closes in the constituencies scheduled to go to the polls in the last phase of balloting on October 3.