SHILLONG: Former deputy chief minister Bindo M Lanong has called Mukul Sangma a master of trickery and cited two instances, concealing a comprehensive mining policy and arm-twisting the former into heading a panel on illegal migrants, in this regard.
Lanong, who was acerbic over Mukul’s remark that Chief Minister Conrad Sangma was a nominee of the BJP, recalled that during the MUA-I government with Mukul at the helm of power, the Supreme Court had asked for mining policy in Meghalaya. Lanong was Mukul’s deputy with additional charge of the Mining and Geology Department. The senior leader said many departments came together to draft a comprehensive policy 2010-11 that was approved by the Cabinet but the same was neither notified nor implemented for reasons best known to the then chief minister.
He also said that in September 2012, hardly four months before the Assembly elections, Mukul issued a notification constituting a high level committee on influx that was supposed to recommend strong mechanism to check illegal immigrants. Lanong recalled how to his surprise he found his name as the chairman of the committee. He had no choice but to accept under Mukul’s pressure, he added.
Many ministers and MLAs, CEMs of three district councils and many NGOs were also selected by him, Lanong said.
“After several sittings and interactions, the NGOs demanded nothing less than inner line permit system in Meghalaya. The committee forwarded the recommendation for ILP in November 2012 to the then chief minister that was kept pending for some time and rejected by his (Mukul’s) newly elected government in 2013,” he added.
Mukul was re-elected as chief minister for the second time in 2013.
Lanong maintained that the other nail, and this time in the Congress coffin, saw the fate of the MPCC in a downswing with many senior leaders “smoothly decimating from the party at certain intervals”.
“If Conrad Sangma is a nominee of the BJP as claimed by Dr Mukul Sangma, leader of opposition, the latter is a master of trickery of many a destiny, including his own,” Lanong said.
