Saturday, July 12, 2025
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Is Purno pushing his luck?

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For the first time ever, India is witnessing an interesting fight for the presidency. From a member of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of which he was the co-founder, Purno Agitok Sangma is now a man without a party but determined not to give up his ambition of getting to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Sangma has done a lot of things that are unprecedented in the predictable world of Indian politics. It was difficult for many to believe that Sangma would quit the Congress and form the NCP. Political observers thought it was political suicide. Sangma said he was against an Italian becoming the prime minister of the country. Considering that Sangma has been the blue-eyed boy of Mr Indira Gandhi and later her son Rajiv Gandhi and that he was considered part of the inner circle of the Nehru-Gandhi family, his leaving the Congress was a political somersault. If truth be told his political career has seen a downward spiral after that. The NCP is today only a regional party with presence only in Maharashtra and Meghalaya. In 2009 when daughter Agatha Sangma won the Tura Parliamentary seat, Sangma pulled all strings to get a ministerial berth for Agatha. Political observers say Sangma tried to mend fences with Sonia Gandhi but failed. Sonia was however gracious enough to agree to accommodate Agatha in the UPA. Meghalaya has two ministers in the Union Cabinet much to the chagrin of many senior Congress MPs from the North East.

In an interview with Karan Thapar on Sunday evening, Sangma came across as a desperate man willing to forget the heinous crimes against Christians committed by the BJP-RSS in Kandhamal, Orissa and Dangs in Gujarat and also the murder of Graham Staines, a Christian missionary. Sangma seemed to make light of these terrible crimes that continue to trouble the Church even today. Sangma’s joining hands with AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha who had once moved the Anti-Conversion Bill also shows the former Lok Sabha Speaker as a person who will aligh with any political group to further his ambition. Thapar termed Sangma as a tragic Greek hero who is pushed by hidden demons to destroy himself. We can only hope that such is not the case!

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