Paul fires return salvo at Mukul
SHILLONG: In a direct retaliation to Chief Minister Dr. Mukul Sangma’s jibe against him, UDP working President Paul Lyngdoh has termed the MUA-II ministers as muster rolls under the Chief Minister.
“The Chief Minister acts as the judge, the jury and the executioner and the ministers in the cabinet have no role to play,” Lyngdoh said on Friday while reacting to the Chief Minister’s statement pointing to differences between Lyngdoh who was the then Urban Affairs Minister and the then PHE Minister AL Hek over the issue of the implementation of the Phase III of Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme (GSWSS).
“We in the then ruling MPA Government always had room for dissent and divergent views, but the present Cabinet ministers are the muster rolls of the Chief Minister,” Lyngdoh said, adding that there was no element of democracy in the present situation.
“It is always preferable to have a team with divergent views rather than having a Chief Minister who presides over the Cabinet as a judge, jury and executor, all in one,” Lyngdoh said of Dr. Sangma.
Laying out details of the issue relating to the Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme funded under the JNNURM, the UDP working president said there was no ‘turf war’ on the matter between him and Hek, as is being alleged by the Chief Minister. Lyngdoh reminded that as per the guidelines of JNNURM, MUDA was notified as the nodal and executing agency of the Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme, and moreover, funds were placed at the disposal of MUDA, while the PHE was notified only as the implementing agency, Lyngdoh stated.
“According to JNNURM guidelines, the progress report of the scheme is sent to the Ministry of Urban Development, and I was only maintaining the procedural guidelines,” the UDP leader argued, while pointing out the after PHE was notified as the implementing agency, it started to attract negative reaction from the Ministry.
Reacting to the Chief Minister’s allegations that he had been responsible for toppling the then MPA Government, Lyngdoh said that it could not have been the handiwork of a single individual.
On the Chief Minister’s comments that political leaders like Lyngdoh and Bindo M Lanong were infusing insecurity among the people in the name of protecting the ‘Jaitbynrew’, Lyngdoh reminded that they (he and Bindo) had greater understanding of the aspirations of the people and were also in sync with what the people think, whereas Mukul was trying to make the Meghalaya into another Syria or Egypt.
On the inter-state boundary issue, Lyngdoh stated that it all started when the Congress in Meghalaya had donated land to Assam when Indira Gandhi chaired a Congress Session in Assam in 1976.
Another plot of Meghalaya land is now occupied by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. Lyngdoh recalled.