Not the leadership issue but the Anti Christian factor still working against BJP in the state. The party has attributed the negative narration before election wherein it was tagged as anti Christian party which restricted the party to only two seats despite political bigwigs of BJP campaign in poll bound Meghalaya.
During the meeting of the Meghalaya BJP leaders, the state BJP President Ernest Mawrie has cited three reasons for its poor performance in the recently concluded Assembly elections.
Addressing media persons after the general meeting, Mawrie said the anti-Christian tag is one of the three reasons why the party did not win in the last Assembly elections.
“Everybody in the august house is raising the point why only close to the elections about 4-5 months before the elections this anti-Christian tag came out in the newspaper or in the whatsapp group that the BJP has done this and has done that and why not throughout the year,” he said.
When asked, Mawrie said, “Our central leaders right from Amit Shah, we have a meeting with religious leaders. Even our national president when he released the manifesto he invited all the religious leaders to have lunch with him. From time to time our national leaders, union ministers, we went and met Bishops and pastors to remove the tag of anti-Christian.
When we met them they are okay they are happy and even from the national office from Delhi we have issued a press statement that we are not against any religion because we believe in secularism and India is a democracy country but still I don’t know here in the NE states still people they put that tag that BJP is anti-Christian which is not true at all.”
On the other hand, the state president the second reason was due to the inability of the party to reach out to organize the party at the grassroot level due to the Covid pandemic.
“I took over as president in 2020. I got only one month’s time (to work) then came the lockdown. So this is the main factor where the organization was not upto the mark, not upto the grassroot level,” he said.
“Thirdly, though the BJP government has provided so many central schemes to the people of our state in terms of free gas connection, free rice, PM Kisan, JJM and other schemes but this advantage has been taken away by some other parties, which I don’t want to mention the name,” he added.
Stating that the BJP had organized 59 public meetings during the elections, Mawrie said, “PM himself was very happy with the performance and attendance of the public in the meeting. There was a huge turnout of the crowd but we could not convert those crowds into votes as people in Meghalaya did not give us the mandate.”
Whether there is any move to remove him as state president, Mawrie however said, “That I will leave it on the decision of the party. If the party feels that your tenure is over then we will project another president, there is no harm as I cannot sit for long (as state president).”
“As per constitution, the term is for three years but it depends on the decision of the central leaders. I don’t have any problem (to step down),” he added.
He said that the term of the national president JP Nadda has been extended till July 2024 and that similarly it depends on the centre’s decision for the states as well adding that in some states, the party has already changed the president.