Congress Accuses Mamata Of Poaching MLAs In Meghalaya

The Congress on Thursday accused Mamata Banerjee of poaching its MLAs in Meghalaya but it is not open to dispute that the leadership’s neglect of the Northeast over the past decade has pushed the party into decline.

It appears that the TMC is on a mission to corner the Congress and reduce it to irrelevance wherever possible – leaders in Tripura, Assam, Goa and Meghalaya are primary targets. But some of the G23 leaders are believed to be on the list, too.

Quite evidently, this is the party’s bid to use the internal turbulence in the Congress for its growth beyond Bengal before any anti-BJP grand alliance takes shape for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections so that the TMC has the leading role in such an alliance.

Trinamul was not in the picture when the Congress government shifted to the BJP lock stock and barrel in Arunachal Pradesh in 2016, a rare phenomenon in Indian politics when a party with barely a footprint in a state took power overnight.

While Congress MLAs were pilfered one after another in Manipur, the party got decimated in Tripura and Nagaland. Its slide seems irreversible in Assam.

While the Congress has no strong leader in the entire Northeast after the death of veteran Tarun Gogoi, the general secretaries looking after the states had left the organisation to fend for themselves.

While Manish Chatrath, who used to handle clerical work at the Delhi headquarters, is now in charge of the Meghalaya and Arunachal units of the Congress, former IPS officer Ajoy Kumar, who left the Congress to join AAP and then return, is looking after Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim.

Assam is under the charge of Jitendra Singh, another leader who lacks organisational experience. Luizinho Faleiro, who was in charge of the northeastern states for a long time, has joined Trinamool.

Congress leaders in Meghalaya led by former chief minister Mukul Sangma were upset because Vincent Pala, a former Lok Sabha MP close to Rahul, was made the state unit chief. Many leaders in Delhi knew Sangma was in a rebellious mood but the crisis was not defused in time.

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