From CK Nayak
NEW DELHI, Oct 12: In what can be termed as more embarrassment to the Meghalaya unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a central minister belonging to the party made it clear that the central government is happy with the performance of the state governments including Meghalaya and Nagaland, which are headed by non-BJP parties.
The Meghalaya BJP was already in an embarrassing position with the divided state unit threatening to even withdraw support from the National People’s Party (NPP)-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) but have been unable to implement it so far.
After going public with the threat, the party leaders had to eat their words since neither the majority state unit nor the central party supported the idea.
The cabinet rank minister was talking to the media persons informally when he said that the Centre is happy with the performances of both Meghalaya and Nagaland which are going to polls early next year. On condition of not being quoted, he was replying to a specific question on his assessment of the two non-BJP-led NDA governments going for assembly elections soon.
Surprisingly, the state party with just two seats in Assembly has declared to contest all the 60 seats in the Meghalaya assembly elections.
The party’s position in the House was maximum three and reduced to zero at one time.
The minister asserted that the Northeast is developing because there is political stability and peace in the states after a long time. Under the BJP-led NDA government, the region is also competing with each others for development, he said. The government has gone all out for connectivity (rail, road, air, and water ways) and large-scale development in telecom, power, health and education and all other social sectors, he said. On the advice of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, all the central ministers are making frequent trips to the region to review the centrally government aided projects which never happened in the past, he said.
The Minister said that under this government, thousands of cores have been spent on the Northeastern states on different projects but mainly on connectivity. By the end of next year, all state capitals of the region will be connected with railheads whereas earlier only Guwahati had a railhead.
The region has as many as three international airports now and air routes within the region even to towns have increased manifold. By 2023, all district headquarters will be joined with national highways, he said.
There is an economic upsurge in the Northeast with tourists going back to the beautiful spots because of peace and connectivity. Soon the Centre will convene an investors’ meet on the region in Delhi, he added.