From Our Special Correspondent
New Delhi: Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma and MPCC president DD Lapang on Monday emphasized on the need for carrying out developmental work while tackling insurgency problem in the Northeastern region where the Congress once used to rule almost in all the states.
Speaking at the Congress Working Committee meet here, Dr Sangma said Meghalaya is carrying out all developmental programme including the most important Integrated Basin Development and Livelihood Programme. The programme, which has nine missions under its fold, aims to create 60,000 entrepreneurs in 2012-13 and four lakh by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan Period, he said.
This programme which has been launched successfully also aims at eradicating poverty in Meghalaya by 2020, Dr Sangma added, while stressing that Central Government sponsored schemes should focus on women, children and other weaker sections of the society.
Lapang said the Congress should gear up to meet the electoral challenges in Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland, where Assembly elections are due in about a year’s time.
For this the entire party, especially at the grassroots level, has to be activated, he said.
In his capacity as Chairman of the North East Congress Committee (NECC), Lapang said development of people of the entire region should be treated as one entity.
He also urged the AICC to strengthen the NECC, which he felt, will revive the past glory of the party in the region.
Presiding over the meeting called after a long gap, party president Sonia Gandhi said the party has to be strengthened at all levels ahead of a series of state elections and the Lok Sabha election in 2014.
“And for this, the most important thing is that we all work unitedly,” she said.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, in his speech, highlighted the improved relations with India’s neighbours mainly in the Northeast.
Dr Singh also pointed out that as part of tribal welfare measures, 17.60 lakh hectares of forest area have been distributed to tribals under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
It is only the Congress party which can carry the country forward through rapid and balanced development, the Prime Minister observed.
Besides the ruling Congress chief ministers and all the Pradesh Congress Committee presidents, CWC member in charge of Meghalaya, Dr Dhaniram Shandil, and Dr Hemo Prabha Saikia, widow of former Assam Chief Minister Hiteswara Saikia, attended the CWC meet. Former Nagaland Chief Minister SC Jamir and AICC general secretary in charge of Tripura, Nagaland and Manipur, Luizinho Faleiro, also attended the meet.
Addressing the media at the end of the meeting, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is projected as a Presidential candidate, provided details of the achievements of the Congress-led second UPA coalition Government which he said gave special focus to the Northeast.