SHILLONG:
A day after the Congress accused other parties of having an unholy alliance, the AITC on February 12 lashed back at the grand old party saying it had a “tacit understanding” with the NPP.
AITC leader George B Lyngdoh alleged that there is a “tacit understanding” between the state leadership of the Congress and the National People’s Party (NPP).
The retort was to the AICC general secretary, Jairam Ramesh’s remak about the unholy alliance of the TMC with the NPP, UDP and BJP, on February 11.
Ramesh had also branded the AITC as C-team of the BJP in the state.
Lyngdoh said it ill behoved a leader of Ramesh’s stature and experience to make unsubstantiated charges and only exposed his lack of understanding of politics in Meghalaya.
“We are the only force that has been able to counter the claims of the NPP-BJP government to which for a very brief period even some Congress leaders had shown support suggesting a tacit understanding between the leaders of the party and the NPP,” the AITC leader said.
Lyngdoh also referred to a recent Congress submission that the party was open to working with any party, including the NPP, to buttress his `tacit understanding’ charge.
He said it was already known that the NPP was BJP behind a mask and it is visible even more now that the two parties are hand in glove. “At the same time, we are seeing the tacit support being shown by the Congress leadership in the state towards NPP and BJP,” he said.
The Congress leader had also rechristened TMC as “JMP,” which stands for ‘Judas Mukul Party,’ while referring to the former leaders of the Congress as Judases.
Lyngdoh said that Ramesh was not aware what had preceded the entire episode of several Congress legislators exiting the party.
It was for the first time in the history of the state where all the elected members and sitting MLAs had to exit their party while some of them had to be thrown out.
“To pinpoint all 17 MLAs as Judases is an effort at blaming elected members who had served the Congress for many decades,” he said.
The opposition chief whip further asserted that the AICC general secretary should have had the time to understand the aspirations of the then leaders elected from the Congress and their vision for the party and for the state.
Stating that as elected members, their first and foremost duty is to the people of the state, Lyngdoh said, “We cannot betray the people of the state. And to Jairam Ramesh we can only say that we are not subservient to any leadership and for him to term us as Judas I think is an insult to him because he hardly even knows the names.”
On Saturday, Jairam Ramesh had alleged that the alliance partners of the MDA have taken a “temporary divorce” for the purpose of elections and are claiming to be fighting as independent parties.
“But let nobody be fooled as the NPP, the UDP and the BJP are all part and parcel of the same package,” he had said while further asserting “The Congress is fighting the cloud of corruption, the cloud of unemployment, the cloud of destruction of Meghalaya’s identity and finally the cloud of unholy alliance – BJP, NPP, UDP, TMC – who are all claiming to fight independently now but mark my words at the first opportunity they will jump into bed together,” Ramesh said at the launch of the Congress’s manifesto for the February 27 assembly election.