Shillong, Nov 26: The ruling multi-party coalition, which met here today to discuss BJP’s corruption charges, has in one voice described the allegations levelled by the State BJP as “baseless” and also adopted a resolution putting down a code of conduct of not going public with any issue relating to the coalition without first discussing with the chief minister and then in the MDA coordination committee.
The resolution, which was unanimously passed by all the representatives and members of the MDA — including two BJP MLAs — is a politically significant move that virtually checkmates State BJP president Ernest Mawrie’s bid to embarrass the coalition through relentless statements in the media.
With the passing of this resolution, for now, the MDA has killed two birds with one stone — ensure the coalition’s stability and isolate the BJP state leaders.
Stating that recently in the press some allegations and statements were made by some of the partners of the MDA coalition and those matters were discussed in the meeting, Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma said that the all the partners were of the opinion that the coalition partners should not come out with such kind of allegations in the open; if there are issues then it should first be taken up with the government and bring it to the coordination committee for discussion, only if situation is not resolved, they can take further steps.
“But the first step would be to discuss within the coalition and the government. This resolution taken today and all coalition partners supported it,” said the chief minister.
To a query on what is the mind of the MDA coordination committee which is represented by members of all the partners of the coalition on the allegations that were levelled by the State BJP earlier, the chief minister said, “All the members felt that all these allegations are baseless and they have been clear that if there are any issues or concerns than the concern partners can always discuss with the CM and bring it to the coordination committee”.
“They felt that the method and the way it was brought out was wrong and shouldn’t have been done,” he added.
Stating that it is very clear that the allegations are just talks that few individuals are doing now, the chief minister clarified, “It is this government that has put an audit inquiry into the GHADC and the JHADC for the last ten years and we are looking into the entire aspect so, when they say that no action has been taken and we have met chief ministers and nothing was done it is a complete lie. We have instituted an inquiry”.
“We also ensured that the entire process and working of the council will improve and an administrator senior officer was appointed there and now the reformations that are needed are going to be moved at a faster pace,” he said.
He informed that he had a good meeting with the BJP national vice president and Meghalaya in-charge M Chuba Ao who has assured that they will work together.
“I told him about the allegations and statement does not bother me and not taking personally and what is important for me is to think in a positive manner and ensure that we work together. He has assured that the BJP will work together and I assured him the other coalition partners will all work together to take the MDA and the state forward.
“We have decided to move forward from all of this and work in a much more coordinated way to ensure that there is no such communication gap in between the members of the MDA,” he added.
The chief minister also informed that both the MLAs of the BJP also reiterated the same and assured that no such situation happens in the future and whatever the case maybe they will always work together as a coalition.
On other issues that were discussed during the meeting, the chief minister said that the coalition partners had expressed concern regarding the COVID situation about the fact that there are still lot of difficulties that people are having while coming into the states.
He said that the state government was trying very hard to get a system in place that will make it convenient for entry of people from outside the state.