SHILLONG: The National Congress Party (NCP) which is an ally of the MDA coalition on Friday questioned the State BJP’s intention in raising the issue of corruption only in respect of centrally funded schemes leaving out illegalities in various spheres.
“You can’t just point about corruption in the central scheme that is coming. You have to be fair when you talk about corruption it should not be confined to only one developmental scheme,” said State NCP Chief Saleng Sangma.
Pointing out that the State BJP nowadays is talking about the GHADC corruption, Sangma said, “Corruption has already engulfed not only the members from the District Council but also the society”.
Backing his statement, Saleng reasoned, “The District Council’s have a lot of executives from revenue department, taxation forest and only the executive member from the civil works deals with the central scheme. Do they mean that only the civil works is corrupted?’’
He alleged that there is a lot of illegal corruption going on in the name of district council.
“Taxation, Forest, Royalty and Water even the members from the District Council are corrupting. The BJP should be clean and fair,” he said further adding that even the MDA government cannot give an answer to that.
Stating that he is not saying that the MDA government is clean, Saleng said, “There may be some irregularities, some illegal activities here and there that way we cannot say MDA is clean”.
“We have seen lots of scam here and there and if it was so clean than last time illegal coal trucks would not have been caught,” he added. Recalling that when he was in the opposition he had raised and also seen the issue of corruption being raised in the Assembly, Sangma said, “I could remember one of the member from Nongstoin who was elected after Hopping Stone Lyngdoh, was trying to bring corruption issues in the house when Dr Mukul was the Chief Minister about illegal coal trucks”.
“Corruption has been there from day one when Meghalaya attained its statehood. When we talk about corruption in a large manner, different corruption are done by different governments and different members,” he said, trying to drive his point home.
“The fight against it has to be from each and every one of us when we talk about corruption. It should be from within oneself,” he added.
