Shillong, Dec 1: The new One North East (ONE) political form led by the National People’s Party and other regional outfits is nothing more than a ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to secure influence through the backdoor, Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president Vincent H Pala said today.
ONE is being spearheaded by the NPP, TIPRA Motha of Tripura, etc to, ostensibly, present a unified voice for the North East in the corridors of power so that the region is accorded more importance by the central government and other quarters.
However, both the NPP and TIPRA Motha, for example, are BJP allies and there is no sign as of yet that they are going to break with the saffron party.
Pala said that the BJP is not popular in many parts of the North East because of its fundamentalist Hindutva ideology and that ONE is a way of giving the BJP a presence in the North East under the guise of something else.
“They (BJP) know many tribals in the North East do not like the BJP, so what they did is made another basket … so that they (the voters) will not go anywhere,” Pala alleged, adding that he had “overheard a conversation at an airport” between BJP and RSS members confirming this – that non-BJP voters will not be swayed by the Congress but will cast their votes in favour of ONE, which is anyway made up of BJP-friendly parties.
Pala said that he will be a happy man if those who are in the One North East have good intentions, “but if you see who are all there in the basket they are all friends of the BJP.”
He cautioned the people of the region to carefully see the differences between the new political formation in the region and BJP, asserting that there really is “no difference”.
Meanwhile, the MPCC president also warned that the NPP-led state government in Meghalaya is taking the state closer to financial ruin by availing numerous loans that, Pala said, amount to almost 28 per cent of state GDP.
“How can a state survive on loans? The internal collection of revenue will hardly be Rs 4,000 crore and we are totally dependent on the Centre,” Pala added.
The MPCC chief said that the state gets around Rs 9,000 crore from taxes and internal revenue is Rs 4,000 crore. For the rest of its budget, the state has to depend on loans and is at the mercy of the central government.
He also alleged that misappropriation of funds is high and this is why profits from government spending are not realised, leading to loans.
Pala also claimed that, as of present, the state has a per capita state debt of Rs 76,000 and a central government debt of Rs 1 lakh for every citizen.
“So this government’s biggest failure is where it takes the loan and where it sends the funds,” the MPCC president said.
Pala also alleged that the funds taken on loans is mainly used for construction of roads and the contractors who get the projects are those in the government. “Mainly, the ministers themselves are the contractors. So there is no distribution of money to the public and that’s why they remain poor,” he added.
