ADOKGRE:
Beware the Ides of March! So goes the saying in Roman history depicting the assassination of Roman emperor Julius Caesar at the hands of his senators, led by his closest friends Brutus and Cassius.
Well, in true political caution, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has issued a warning to his primary opponent Trinamool Congress, particularly Mamata Banerjee, to be wary of her flock from Meghalaya who jumped ship into her fold ahead of elections, warning that she could come a cropper within months of the March results.
In a veiled warning to his late father’s colleague and now opponent, Conrad Sangma told a rally of several thousand supporters of the NPP at Adokgre that Mamata is being deceived by those very leaders who had joined her as they planned to flee the coop post results.
“Madam Mamata Banerjee, many leaders have joined you today; many leaders from different political parties have joined the TMC. But let me tell you and this is not Conrad Sangma saying it, this is the word in the market and you can ask anybody, you have lot of people in different networks they will tell you, that most of these leaders who have joined the TMC today have already planned to leave the TMC after the elections. They are already in contact with different political parties; they are already talking to many people. I am not saying this, this is the word in the market, in the political circle,” he cautioned.
The NPP alleges that the Congress leaders who joined the Trinamool are preparing the ground to flee to bigger parties like the BJP after reading the ground situation where it appears to be unfavourable to the Bengal party.
At the same time, he also took a leaf out of TMC’s book to counter the TMC’s charges against him and his party. Sangma labelled TMC as a ‘outsider’ party, much in the same way TMC had labelled BJP in the West Bengal polls.
“TMC is new in Meghalaya and they will need a lot of time to create any sort of impact here. Their leaders are all old players, who have come from Congress and have got scope to serve Meghalaya when they were in Congress but have failed. TMC is yet to understand the northeast and its people, they would need time, they are an outsider in Meghalaya just like TMC had claimed BJP and other national parties were outsiders in Bengal elections,” Sangma said.