TURA: The sitting GNC MLA from Chokpot Clifford R Marak passed away in a Guwahati hospital early Saturday morning. He was 67.
The two times MDC of the GHADC from Rongrikimgre constituency and four time MLA of Chokpot had been ailing for quite some time and had been treated at Apollo hospital in Chennai for kidney and liver complications.
He returned to Shillong to continue his political work and visit his constituency in Garo Hills but a few weeks ago experienced health problems and was admitted to International hospital in Guwahati where he breathed his last. He was laid to rest at Tura cemetery.
Born on April 13, 1947 in Sibbari border village of South Garo Hills, Clifford Marak’s political career spanned close to forty years from the time he was first elected as an MDC in 1978 from Rongrikimgre on an APHLC ticket to being elected to the state assembly from Chokpot as an Independent candidate in 1983.
During his tenure in the district council he held the executive member portfolios of education, land and revenue. He was also made the state agriculture minister during the government of Late B B Lyngdoh in the mid 1990s’.
He was an MDC from Rongrikimgre in 1978 and 1983, Chokpot MLA in 1983, 1988, 1998 and 2013.
After his recent victory from Chokpot in 2013 he joined the opposition Meghalaya Peoples’ Front alliance and was very vocal in the assembly.
Known throughout the state and beyond as the father of the Garoland movement, Late Clifford Marak, kept the movement for a separate state for the people of Garo Hills alive for over two decades after breaking away from the Hill Peoples’ Union (HPU) and giving a separate entity to his party-Garo National Council (GNC) in the early part of the 1990s’.
From the time he took over the reins of the GNC as its president no other party leader has won the election to the party post.
A firebrand leader he raised various issues concerning the state and also at the local level.
He was one of the first few political leaders to raise objections to the controversial ‘revamping’ of the Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBOSE) during the tenure of Mukul Sangma as education minister in 2005.
He was vocal on several occasions over the alleged violation of the state job reservation policy and criticised the government for its failure to fill the vacant positions in the Garo quota.
Believing that a separate state was the only answer to the problems of the Garo people, he moved a resolution in the state assembly on the Garoland demand which was defeated by the ruling side. He also contested the Lok Sabha elections as a GNC candidate in favour of Garoland state.
At the local level, he undertook a hunger strike outside the Tura PHE office to demand for adequate supply of drinking water for the citizens of Tura in 2013 when the town was facing acute shortage.
