By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Nov 28: Amid speculations running rife, TMC Parliamentary Party leader Mukul Sangma, on Tuesday, admitted to holing a series of political dialogues with BJP leaders. He however called it a ‘long and old story’.
“It is an old story. I was also looking at the media reports. When I went through it, I understood these are based on sources. Again if you are looking at sources, you can arrive at a conclusion that these are more on some kind of inputs which are available based on what has happened in the past,” he said.
Sangma said, “I can be blunt and frank. There were meetings but even for political discussion, there was a meeting but that was long ago in 2019-2020. I had a series of meetings because they wanted to have a meeting at some senior minister level. They were mandated to have a discussion with me on the run-up to elections in 2023”.
At that time, Mukul said he felt that he could not say no to the offer for discussions “because … there is no harm in listening… at that time (2020-2021), I was deciding to leave Congress,” he said. The TMC leader said many emissaries were sent even before that.
Talking about shifting camp to TMC, Mukul said, “Building a political party is always an uphill task, and we build a political party with an intent that revolves around serving the state and the people. The party is never the target but the people and the state are. The party is a platform and collectively we utilise the strength to achieve the goal of serving the people”.
He asserted that TMC Meghalaya has built a strong workforce at the grassroots level albeit Assembly elections were not very impressive.
He also acknowledged the work put in by the party workers to build a base for TMC in all the 24 constituencies of Garo Hills region. “Having come that far, we need to put our efforts further, slog harder, have patience and that is what I would look at”.