Our Special Correspondent
TURA:
Meghalaya Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been accused of dangling party tickets in return for cash with a former legislator from Garo Hills revealing to media persons that state president Ernest Mawrie had sought Rs 10 lakh from him, and on being refused, failed to find his name in the candidate list.
The party leadership has also been accused of sabotaging its own prospects for the upcoming Assembly elections in the state by shuffling candidates from their bastions to new areas making way for the opposition parties to gain.
Former MLA of Rongram constituency and ex-MDC of Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) Ismail Marak accused the party leadership of deliberately shooting itself in the foot with its decisions that appear to strengthen their opponents and weaken the saffron party itself.
Having been denied the party ticket for North Tura, he crossed over to the All India Trinamool Congress on Sunday, but not before speaking to the media and giving a damaging report on the system of ticket allocation in the saffron party.
“When I applied for the party ticket and became one of the aspirants, Mawrie asked me for Rs 10 lakh. When I asked him why, he claimed it was a kind of loan. I refused to pay anything and that is probably why my name didn’t figure in the final list,” suspects Ismail Marak.
This is the second such cash-for-tickets allegation against the BJP leadership within a span of two days.
Another BJP candidate who unsuccessfully contested the Umsning election in 2018, Michael Kharsyntiew, had alleged in Shillong that the BJP’s then state president Shibun Lyngdoh and general secretary Bashailang Khongwir had each accepted Rs 10,000 from him before allocation of tickets for the last elections.
“I strongly believe that every aspiring candidate who sought tickets for this election must have also been given this demand for Rs 10 lakh but no one is willing to come forward and reveal it. It seems tickets were up for sale for Rs 10 lakh,” said Ismail Marak as he questioned the BJP’s moral right to talk about fighting corruption while failing to set its own house in order.
“With the kind of leaders the BJP is running in the state, how can the party even think of fighting corruption? These leaders are dragging down the party and will ensure not a single seat is won in Garo Hills,” prophesied the former BJP leader.
He said that although the party is doing well at the Centre under the able leadership of Prime minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, JP Nadda and Rajnath Singh, the same was not the case in Meghalaya where the state leaders are indulging in corruption and destroying the image of the party.
“The state president demands cash, some of us who are ticket aspirants say no. So we are overlooked during allocation of tickets,” alleged Marak.