Tura MP Saleng Sangma of the Congress Party challenged the National People’s Party (NPP) to have the guts and expel the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the state governing alliance if the latter really supported the Congress at this year’s Lok Sabha election in Garo Hills.
The NPP’s Rakkam A Sangma, a cabinet minister, accused the BJP of supporting Saleng against the NPP candidate for the Tura seat, which the Congress won handsomely. The BJP’s central leadership chose not to contest either seat in Meghalaya and instead officially supported the NPP. However, it was alleged that many rank and file members as well as state leaders were unhappy about supporting the NPP’s Agatha K Sangma and instead worked against her.
The claims came to the fore once against after Tura MDC Bernard N Marak of the BJP claimed that the saffron party’s members had backed Saleng after he approached them for support.
Speaking to reporters here today, Saleng said that what Bernard had said is not the full story.
“BJP and Congress are like fire and water and we will never work together,” Saleng said, adding that the NPP leaders have lost their mind after he won the Tura seat.
He stated that it is true that he asked BJP leaders for support in the election but that was on a personal level and not for the Congress. He even approached leaders of the NPP for the same reason, he claimed.
“They supported me as an individual and not as a party,” he said, adding that the NPP should show some guts by dropping the BJP if it wants to distance itself from the saffron party.
Despite the BJP only having two MLAs in the 60-member Assembly, it has found itself part of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government’s first and second iterations. The NPP, although it has no MPs now, is a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.
