By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Jan 9: After the sounding of the war cry by the BJP, the ruling NPP has termed the saffron party’s RTI war against the government a farce.
NPP working president and PHE Minister, Marcuise Marak, on Tuesday said that the State BJP’s accusations, particularly pertaining to the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), are fuelled by upcoming Lok Sabha elections in mind.
“Let him file the RTI no issue. JJM can be accessed as there is a dashboard and everyone can view it. Bernard (Marak) is talking about which village? Let him pinpoint the villages and the project so that we can also rectify it, if there is a problem,” said Marcuise while speaking to The Shillong Times.
The state BJP is gearing up for an RTI war to hold the state government accountable for the poor execution of numerous central programmes. The results, the BJP said, will be shared with the Centre for appropriate action.
Trashing Meghalaya government’s claims of having reached a monumental milestone by surpassing the national average of connections in the JJM, the state BJP had recently declared the performance of the state below par insofar as JJM implementation is concerned.
State BJP vice president and Tura MDC Bernard Marak had stated that the whole idea behind implementing the JJM seems to have been defeated at the grassroots and village levels because people are not getting water as has been visualized by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Reacting to this, the PHE Minister said, “His accusations are simply a bid to malign the department’s image and nothing else”.
He said that the accusations are fuelled by the Lok Sabha polls, and the BJP wants to show the NPP in bad light.
Stating that the PHE department is doing very well in implementing the JJM project, he said, “When we started JJM in the year 2019, it was only 4500 connections in rural areas. Today, we stand at 4.73 lakh. Very shortly, we are going to touch 5 lakh which means it is huge achievement for us and our state”.
“The accusations hold no ground,” he added.
A few days ago, the Conrad K Sangma-led government had said it provided JJM connections to 72.37% of the targeted households.