SHILLONG: Congress candidate from South Shillong, Manas Chaudhuri, filed his nomination on Wednesday, the last day for filing of nomination in the run up to the Assembly elections scheduled for February 27.
Responding to queries from the reporters about the competition scene in South Shillong, Chaudhuri said, “I don’t see much of a competition. It will be hands-down victory for the Congress.”
Commenting on the prospect of the BJP, he maintained that BJP was not yet acceptable to the people of the state as Christians, Muslims and religious minority groups were wary of the BJP’ agenda.
“It is not easy to sell an idea with all kinds of wrong reports appearing in the media everyday about BJP fringe communities and fringe groups doing all kinds of vandalism,” he added.
Chaudhuri asserted that BJP’s agenda was aimed at intrusion into the rights of minorities and criticised it for giving sops of Rs 70 crore to religious groups which, he said, Christian groups had not accepted.
Drawn to the remarks of former MLA from South Shillong, Sanbor Shullai, who said that he would win by over 15,000 votes, Chaudhuri said, “He may have his own pipe-dream. He does not know that there is double trouble for him.”
“How can he win by 15,000? This is a pipe-dream; he is living in a fool’s paradise. His days are numbered,” Chaudhuri said adding Shullai is having the burden of anti-incumbency while joining the BJP has made him unacceptable to the people of South Shillong constituency. He added that the people of Laban were intelligent, conscious and well-informed.
Chaudhuri pointed that there were 32, 000 voters out of which 11,000 are Christians and Mohammedans who he claimed were not going the BJP way and he said, “One out of three voters in South Shillong are against the BJP.”
Priorities
Chaudhuri said that if he got elected to the Assembly, the issue of scarcity drinking water would be his top priority, civic amenities, he said, has a lot of deficiencies as no MLA fund was used to deal with the problem. He claimed that Rs 2 crore MLA scheme was used only to buy articles which are of no value to the people.
Stating that daily wage earners are struggling to live a decent life, he said, “My priority will be to help the poor and the downtrodden and I am not making an empty election promise. I want to increase the rate of minimum wages in Meghalaya.”
Observing that the current minimum wage of Rs 236 per day for laborers is very little, he said, “An MLA’s monthly salary was Rs 5000 when the state was created. Today, Meghalaya’s MLAs get Rs 2 lakh a month as salary. If MLA’s salary can go up, why the poor people’s daily wage cannot go up?”
Congress will retain power
He claimed that poor people would not suffer if the congress came to power as he maintained that Congress was destined to retain power in Meghalaya.
