Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP Gaurav Gogoi on Monday said that the Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma is a “puppet” of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Addressing media persons, Gogoi said, “Conrad Sangma is a puppet of Sarma and he in turn is controlled by Amit Shah in Delhi. That’s why Sarma considers Amit Shah to be the PM and not Mr Modi which he publicly announced in public meetings.”
“He is not even a full chief minister. He is like a half chief minister because most of the main decisions seem to be taking place in Assam by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, he is coming and saying we will do this, we will do that,” he said.
Gogoi said that the statement of CM Conrad Sangma lamenting about the ‘betrayal’ of the MDA partners is nothing but political drama to hoodwink the people of Meghalaya. The fact that the MDA partners are turning on each other indicates that they can smell their failure in the upcoming elections
He said the NPP -BJP MDA alliance partners are masters in the act of fooling the people of Meghalaya with their accusations and counter accusations against each other just before elections.
Gogoi christened NEDA the Northeast Drama Alliance and added the convenor of NEDA & Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma cannot absolve BJP from failure of MDA government.
“Yesterday NEDA Convenor & CM Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma admitted that despite being a part of the alliance NPP led MDA government – their government in Meghalaya had failed to deliver and questioned where the money meant for development had vanished. He lamented that medical colleges in Shillong and Tura did not see the light of day as promised. He also admitted that the alliance government even failed to host the national games. The people of Meghalaya want to know why Sarma was silent and did not take up these issues as NEDA convenor before elections?”
He said everybody is aware how the Government was formed in Meghalaya with BJP playing an important role as a broker to form the post poll alliance.
“Everybody is aware how close Himanta Biswa Sarma is with CM Conrad Sangma and how he was made CM. Now Sarma cannot absolve himself of the responsibility of denying the people of Meghalaya a government that should have been committed to work for the people of Meghalaya. He cannot now blame the NPP led MDA Government alone for not fulfilling its promises. He cannot absolve his party, the BJP from the corruption carried out by the MDA. Wasn’t BJP MLA’s Sanbor Shullai and A L Hek cabinet Ministers in the MDA?” he said.
Gogoi said, “If Meghalaya Government is a failure and incompetent, then he and his party are equally responsible for this failure.”
“Moreover, we cannot agree more with Sarma when he calls people who leave their original parties as ‘unstable’. We have seen how ‘stable’ the Government of Assam has become with communal unrest on the rise, with the displacement of genuine people on encroachment drives, with disruption of families in the name of action against child marriages, with increasing encounter deaths, with increasing crimes against women and many more. People know how ‘stable’ the BJP Government of Assam has become when compared with the Tarun Gogoi led Congress Government,” he added.
The Congress MP said Sarma has claimed that there has not been a single incident in Assam that has affected the religious sentiments of Christian people in his state. On the contrary news reports have shown increasing intolerance towards minorities – Muslims and Christians alike.
“There have been instances of church demolition in Chirang in the BTAD area of Assam Bhutan border by BJP Govt. This anti-Christian attitude of the BJP has increased manifold in Assam as in rest of India,” he said.
He said recently Janajati Dharma Sanskriti Suraksha Manch in Assam (an organisation backed by RSS) has demanded the removal of the Scheduled Tribe Christians. This is against the spirit of respecting the indigenous ethnic origin of the Scheduled Tribes of the North East, especially the Christian community in Meghalaya and Nagaland. It also demonstrates the compelling need of BJP to repeatedly invoke their anti-Christian mentality. Religious profiling and harassment of the Christian community in Majuli, Assam is further evidence of the mistreatment of the minority communities by BJP.
He said in Assam the Police Special Branch SP’s sent out “secret” letters to all SPs in the districts seeking information on churches and religious conversion in the region adding this is a clear attempt at identifying and targeting Christians in the region. Most recently on February 14 in Narmadapuram in Madhya Pradesh, a church was vandalized.
On the law and order breakdown in the state, Gogoi said, “The Chief Minister today himself has accepted the failure of law-and-order in the state by his government. Can the people of Meghalaya repose their faith in a government which itself accepts that it cannot handle law and order?”
He said with all the MDA alliance partners busy negotiating corrupt deals, governance had taken a backseat resulting in the drug mafia spreading its tentacles in all parts of the state and the number of drug addicts has reached alarming proportions.
In order to make Meghalaya drug free, we will adopt a policy of zero tolerance towards drug peddlers and also open up 50 de-addiction and drug counselling centres state-wide.
Gogoi said that the people of Meghalaya are aware and politically conscious to see through this charade and will give a befitting reply on election say to this sinister alliance. The people of Meghalaya need a government run from Shillong and not from Dispur or Nagpur.