GUWAHATI
Meghalaya and Nagaland-based political parties have slammed Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for blaming the electoral loss of the NDA candidates in these States on leaders of a “particular faith”.
Candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party allies — the National People’s Party (NPP) and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) — lost the Shillong and Tura Lok Sabha seats in Meghalaya and the lone constituency in Nagaland.
“The Assam Chief Minister, who seems to be a habitual loose talker, should mind his own business and look at his own backyard. He has no right whatsoever to interfere in the affairs of Meghalaya as far as the recently-concluded Parliamentary election is concerned,” Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit, the chief of the Voice of the People Party (VPP), said in Meghalaya’s capital Shillong on Friday.
The VPP’s Ricky Andrew J. Syngkon bagged the Shillong seat by defeating three-time MP Vincent H. Pala of Congress by 3.72 lakh votes. The NPP’s Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh finished a distant third.
The NPP’s Agatha K. Sangma failed to retain the Tura seat, which Saleng A. Sangma of Congress won.
“The people of Meghalaya have the right to choose any person as long as he is an Indian citizen and qualified to contest. They are not so naïve to not know the aims, objectives, agenda, and manifestos of the political parties which contested the polls,” Mr. Basaiawmoit said, condemning the Assam Chief Minister for trying to portray Christians in the region as partisan.
He asserted that the church in Meghalaya has never been involved in any electoral politics.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com. Read the full story here.