‘State Congress conducting ‘unauthorised’ elections’
From CK Nayak
New Delhi: The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has taken serious note at the way “unauthorised” elections are being held for party tickets mainly in Khasi and Jaintia Hills districts a year ahead of the Assembly polls and without any official declaration.
Sanjay Bapna, secretary in charge of Meghalaya told The Shillong Times that such elections are held without any official sanction from the AICC.
“This is certainly not the way party tickets are given for the Assembly seats,” he said.
Of course the exercise for giving party tickets is done before the polls but all names do come to the AICC Election Committee which finalises the names after which the party High Command officially declares the names, he said, while expressing surprise and anger at how the elections have been conducted at the Block level and results announced even before the approval of the AICC.
With hardly one year to go for Assembly polls in Meghalaya strange things are happening in the ruling Congress with sham elections for tickets, some of them even for sale and others making overtures to the United Democratic Party has started worrying the AICC here. Obviously, some of the top party leaders have given false assurance to some gullible candidates, AICC sources quipped.
The party president, Friday Lyngdoh, is convalescing in a hospital in distant Vellore with no clear handing over of charges.
“In the absence of the PCC president everybody is president with nobody bothering about anybody,” party sources said.
Some of the top leaders who are in the co-ordination committee have given tickets to their favourites. At least three seats — Jirang, Nongkrem, Umsning have gone to the UDP activists, sources said.
In Jirang the son of a diehard UDP leader was elected to for the Congress ticket and the candidate is not even enrolled in the party as yet. In Nongkrem, a former rebel Congressman who had already switched to UDP has been elected as candidate.
In a strange decision the party president had decided that in the face of many claimants the party would go to the grass root level for electing the candidates in stead of selecting them which is the usual procedure. Normally, after taking names from the block levels the PCC takes up with the AICC for finally selecting candidates.
Some of the elections are riddled with controversies like that of Nongkrem. Seven out of 19 units under the Nongkrem Block Congress Committee (NBCC) raised objections over the manner the election was conducted.
The seven units demanded that there should be re-polling since majority of the members from the unit did not get the opportunity to vote in the election. Following the objection the matter was referred to the EKDCC for a final decision.
It is learnt that there was alleged manipulation in the election process by certain senior Congress leaders. The problem has arisen in the constituencies where the Congress does not have a sitting MLA.
Ironically, no such election for party candidates has come from the Garo Hill districts.
In all of this jamboree the opposition parties are having the last laugh.