By Albert Thyrniang

Finally the Congress has announced all the 60 candidates for next month’s Assembly elections. An average follower of the state politics knows who picked and chose the names and why. The Chief Minister justified the list by declaring that that winnability is the only criterion followed. It’s true but there’s much more to it. The Congress heavy weights in the state tried to outsmart and out-weigh each other.

The most glaring case is that of Rangsakona Constituency in West Garo Hills. Adolf Lu Hitler R Marak, currently an NCP MLA was lured and given ticket from Bajengdoba Constituency to make way for Chief Minister, Dr. Mukul Sangma’s younger brother Zenith M Sangma to contest from Rangsakona Constituency. Adolf Hitler, who was once arrested on charges of harbouring militants, had defeated the junior Sangma in the last election from the same constituency. The fall out is: Bajengdoba will have a rebel candidate narrowing the prospect of the party there.

A case of family ties superseding everything else is the allotment of ticket to the wife of the Chief Minister, Mrs. Dikkanchi D Shira who will try her luck from Mahendraganj constituency. It is not known how long the better half of the Chief Minister has been a primary member of the party of her spouse; whether she had held any responsibility/post or served the party in any capacity is not known, but there are certainly more deserving and even winnable candidates than her. If others have mastered the art of promoting family dynasty why should the Chief Minister of the state be far behind? Now the CM will have three members of his family vying for the Legislative Assembly. Two other lucky brothers who were declared Congress candidates are Sniawbhalang Dhar and Ngaitlang Dhar from Nartiang and Umroi constituency respectively.

Another blatant case is that of Nongstoin. The party ticket goes to Dr. Pariong Lyngdoh, who is presently the HSPDP MLA from Pariong Constituency. Naturally Congressmen from the capital of West Khasi Hills are bitter that the party ticket is given to a rank outsider. What is interesting here is that the physician is up against his former mentor and HSPDP’s founder, Hopingstone Lyngdoh. The electorate will decide whether the junior and senior Lyngdoh will represent them after the elections. The former pretended to be a loving and caring doctor (especially to children) before finding his true calling in politics while the latter is responsible for keeping Nongstoin and West Khasi Hills as a whole in a time warp of under-development. Of course, a third or a fourth candidate may upset their plans. Other ‘non-Congressmen’ who will have the right to contest on a Congress ticket are Lamison D Sangma from Raksamgre, Manas Chaudhuri from South Shillong and AT Mondal from Phulbari.

A prominent Congress leader in West Khasi Hills who was denied party ticket is Irene Lyngdoh, the former representative from Pariong Constituency. She is a victim of the MPCC president, DD Lapang’s tricks who favoured his close aide Boldness L Nongum. While terming the party’s decision not to allot her the ticket from Mawthadraishan as ‘backstabbing’, she has already decided to contest as a rebel independently. Ms Lyngdoh who had done some visible developmental work in her former backward constituency while she was an MLA could ensure the defeat of her rival.

The party’s ticket from Mawkyrwat went to Rowell Lyngdoh. The Deputy Chief Minister who played no part in the formation of the new district – South West Khasi Hills, escaped embarrassment as he was the only applicant for the party ticket. The twice returned MLA was comfortably unaware of the process to form new districts. A Deputy Chief Minister was kept in the dark! It speaks volumes! When he woke up to the reality that his home district, the biggest in the state was overlooked he even refused to resign and take responsibility. Apart from his ineffectiveness, a casual tour of his constituency will tell that he had done precious little. These days contractors’ bills are passed but there are no road repair works of any kind taking place anywhere. As for the rest, the less said the better!

A person who benefited from Union Minister Vincent H Pala’s influence is his close aide Methodius Dkhar. Pala, who was himself, not long ago given party ticket to the Lok Sabha for being a multi-crore-pati made sure that Dkhar, a party member for just a few months, got the ticket at the expense of the long serving State Mahila Congress general secretary, Pelcy Snaitang. No wonder the shattered Snaitang resigned from the party and announced her Independent candidature from Mawshynrut constituency.

Another case of Pala bulldozing his might is the success of his aide Jropsing Nongkhlaw to secure the party ticket from Shella constituency. The Shella Block Congress Committee (SBCC) president, Leston Wanswett has to learn the hard way that the Congress is an undemocratic party. Like many others, he is helpless except to protest by throwing himself in the ring to spoil the party of the cash rich coal baron, Pala. The government employee turned politician has now manifested his interest in state politics.

Call it a game of one-up-manship or internal bickering the power struggle is in three directions (persons). Each one tried to get his pound of flesh. Each one tried to be more powerful than the other. Ultimately and smartly they agreed on status quo. Union Minister Vincent H Pala firmly controls Jaintia Hills; DD Lapang holds sway in Khasi Hills and the Chief Minister, Dr Mukul Sangma rules Garo Hills. Those who were in their favour were rewarded; those out of favour were omitted. Each power house liberally handed party tickets to their chose aides and relatives and discarded deserving, genuine, hardworking and long serving party men and women. They checkmated those that are a threat to them.

The power struggle is not over with the declaration of the 60 candidates. It will go on up to the elections and beyond. The three most powerful men will now put up dummy candidates and under cover help party ticket losers to win wherever they challenge the rivals’ close aides who were declared as official nominees. Disgruntled ticket seekers who have not taken things lying down will be determined to play spoil sports. They are up in arms to revenge the ‘injustice’. A wave of sympathy for being ‘victimized’ could work in their favour. The biggest and oldest national party is in for a serious trouble. Its hopes and prospects of securing a majority in the Legislative Assembly will be a tough ask.

The issue here is that the candidates were decided on the basis of influence, power and family ties not on merit. Manipulation was evident. This is against democratic principles. It is an insult to workers who had served the party. It is a slap on their faces. It will kill hard work and party loyalty. They count for nothing as tickets are given to members of other political parties and new comers! The excuse given in winnability! Is winnability more important that hard work and party loyalty? Is winnability alone justified? If so why have a political party? Why have state, district and block units? Why have party functionaries? There is no point. Just choose winnable candidates from anywhere. The party with the symbol of the Hand has sacrificed democratic principles at the altar of power struggle.

By Sanat Kaul

In India the strong influence of Air India over the ministry of civil aviation led to a conservative policy towards such agreements in spite of repeated requests of ministries of commerce and external affairs to be more liberal. Did this lead to an overall economic loss to the country as business people could not get tickets when needed? No such calculation has been made but the answer is likely to be in the affirmative.

In the past it was always Air India’s inability to meet the requests of foreign airlines for more capacity in matching the flights performed by them into and out of India that discouraged the government from giving more international routes into India.

The conflict was whether Air India is more important than India as the demand from foreign airlines for transporting passengers, especially during winter season, far exceeded the sanctioned capacity.

As a last resort, to meet the annual demand of passengers going into and out of India during the winter season, the Director General Civil Aviation would declare an ‘open sky’ for the winter season permitting foreign airlines to bring in bigger or more aircrafts.

This policy met with limited success as airlines find it difficult to change their schedule or size of aircraft at short notice for half the year because of their commitments worldwide. However, in recent times the influence of Air India in bilateral negotiations has diminished. Air India no longer has the right of first refusal in getting foreign routes.

With private airlines of India being allowed to operate abroad from India from 2002, Air India tried to maintain its prime position. This was done by three means: First, it managed to get a commitment from the government of first right of refusal for new foreign routes when given to other airlines. Second, private airlines were not permitted to go abroad unless they had completed five years of operations in India. The third was an embargo of 5- years on the lucrative Gulf routes for other Indian airlines.

Not allowing any domestic airline to take foreign routes even when they were not being served by Air India amounted to a national waste. These were administrative decisions and discriminated against private airlines of India. A new foreign airline without any previous experience could come into India if it was designated by another country but our airlines could not go abroad unless they had completed 5- years and had 20 aircrafts with them.

The first anomaly has been done away with by allowing our airlines to go abroad and fill up our vacant bilateral slots. As a result private airlines of India now carry more passengers than Air India and are opening up new routes. However, the second policy of not allowing Indian airlines to go abroad unless they have completed 5- years of domestic flying also needs a review. The third regarding Gulf routes have also been done away with in 2007 on completion of the five year embargo.

With a booming market, there is no reason why foreign airlines should take away our international traffic disproportionately. Ideally, Indian airlines should handle 50 per cent of the actual international traffic while foreign airlines coming into India should handle the other half. This correction is now taking place slowly as a result of our change in policy and now private airlines carry more passengers internationally than Air India.

This brings us to the issue of creating an international hub at Delhi, Bangalore or Hyderabad. Dubai and Singapore airports have grown as hubs partly because India never had an airport capable of providing a good and friendly hub. Now with Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore having good and capable airports promoting one of them as hubs is a distinct possibility.

Promotion of an international hub requires a good and cheap transit airport and government support, especially with regard to a liberal bilateral aviation policy for that airport/ city. Can we achieve this feat? Difficult, unless we evolve a proactive policy towards it. The concession agreement signed between Airports Authority of India and GMR Group for Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) provides for 26 per cent equity for Airports Authority of India (AAI) and 74 per cent for GMR group. However, it also stipulated that AAI will not bring in more than Rs. 500 crore as equity.

This faulty condition did not allow higher equity base when desired by GMR and they had to resort to collecting Airport Development Fee (ADF) more as viability gap funding measure. The first step towards correcting this anomaly has been taken by reducing the airport development fee by half.

The second step is now being taken by directing AAI to bring in more equity into DIAL.This corrects the anomaly in the original concession Agreement of 2006.These two steps will hopefully reduce the high costs of Delhi airport followed by Mumbai airport and make them more competitive.

Among the future steps needed are to reduce the sales tax on ATF by bringing it under the category of “declared goods” thereby attracting only 4 per cent tax unlike around 30 per cent in some states. There is also a need to look into possible cartelisation by the four public sector undertakings in manipulating Air Turbine Fuel prices. INAV