New Delhi: After a long hiatus and loss of power in the Northeastern states, the Congress on Saturday overhauled the party’s once forgotten North East Coordination Committee (NECC) with Chief Minister Mukul Sangma as its convener.
The Committee, the party felt, will give a fitting reply to the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA).
Having lost Nagaland, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh to the BJP, the grand old party “reconstituted” the almost defunct NECC with all the present and former chief ministers and party heads, including former convener D.D Lapang and former chief minister S.C Marak.
“NECC was not defunct. It has only been reconstituted,” Sangma, flanked by former Arunachal chief minister Nabam Tuki and former Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, said at the AICC headquarters here on Saturday.
Both the sitting Chief Ministers – Lal Thanhawla of Mizoram and Ibobi Singh of Manipur – are among the 11 members.
The committee mostly consists of PCC presidents and CLP leaders of the states.
There are eight permanent invites, including former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and S.C Marak. Lapang was the last convener of NECC.
The committee’s meeting will be held on a rotation basis in the states and the respective senior leader from each state will preside over the meet, the Meghalaya Chief Minister said.
Elaborating on how the Congress-led UPA tried to bring remote North East to the national mainstream, the Meghalaya Chief Minister said, “The century-old party knew the pulse of varied ethnic groups in the region and accordingly gave them several special benefits like the North East Investment and Industrial Policy and the special category status.”
After its massive victory in the Assam assembly elections, the BJP had, in a show of strength, held the first political conclave of NEDA, which constitutes as many as ten regional parties from the North East.
Party sources admitted that with BJP eying the remaining three Congress-ruled states of Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram the AICC has decided to spruce up its strategy to strengthen its position in these states and the rest of the North East.
A senior party functionary, on the condition of anonymity, said NECC would work towards improving the party’s image in these states and take up developmental issues.
Previously, NECC aimed at galvanising the party from the grassroots level and prepare it to face various elections in the northeastern states. But it became ineffective in the last couple of years with no meeting of the Committee held for a long time.
Sangma claimed that the BJP-led NDA is destroying the economy of the North East by choking central funds to the non-BJP states and added that it forced the Congress out of power in Arunachal Pradesh.
