Congress President Sonia Gandhi will touch down in Tura, headquarters of Meghalaya’s West Garo Hills district, on Tuesday with a single-minded purpose: ensure the defeat of former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Agitok Sangma in the Lok Sabha elections.
The Meghalaya PCC here said Sonia would address a “massive public meeting” at Tura. Tura Lok Sabha seat, which goes to polls on April 20, includes the three districts of Garo Hills.
For reasons quite easy to pinpoint, Sangma’s defeat is way up in the pecking order of Sonia’s priorities. For she is now in a payback mood. It was Sangma, after all, who had voiced the loudest protests over Sonia’s foreign origin some years back and had even split the Congress on this score.
The Congress has since won back some ground on this, with Sharad Pawar and Tariq Anwar softening their stance and the former striking an alliance with his parent party in Maharashtra. Sangma, as a result, has been considerably weakened, losing the NCP symbol and being compelled to form the Nationalist Trinamool Congress with Mamata Banerjee. Now the Congress has realised that it is within sniffing distance of dealing a body blow to Sangma where it hurts most: in Tura where the Lok Sabha Speaker has not lost an election in his 25-year career.
It is therefore a do-or-die situation for Congressmen in Tura. The party has fielded Meghalaya PWD Minister Mukul Sangma against the NTC heavyweight. A doctor-turned politician, Mukul Sangma is the best bet that the Congress has in these parts, and will put up a tough fight against the former Lok Sabha Speaker.
{{/usCountry}}It is therefore a do-or-die situation for Congressmen in Tura. The party has fielded Meghalaya PWD Minister Mukul Sangma against the NTC heavyweight. A doctor-turned politician, Mukul Sangma is the best bet that the Congress has in these parts, and will put up a tough fight against the former Lok Sabha Speaker.
{{/usCountry}}Sangma’s pitch has been queered on several counts. He has lost his party symbol for the second time in the last five years. But this time he had to tamely surrender his NCP platform at the Election Commission’s behest and is contesting on a Trinamool symbol which is a little-known entity in the North-east. Moreover, the Congress is funneling huge amounts of resources to wrest the seat. Cadres by the hundreds have been dispatched to the three Garo Hills districts to campaign for the junior Sangma.
Congress heavyweights including MPCC chief and former CM Salseng C. Marak and Meghalaya Home Minister Robert G. Lyngdoh have also set up camp in Garo Hills and are frantically making arrangements for Sonia’s visit.
To add to Sangma’s cup of woes, he is now enmeshed in a face-saving exercise trying to counter allegations of his nexus with several banned militant groups.
The Congress has been claiming that it has enough evidence against the former Lok Sabha Speaker of his hobnobbing with leaders of the banned Achik National Volunteers’ Council.
Poster payback
PA Sangma on Saturday filed a complaint with the EC charging the Congress of campaigning on “communal lines” through its election posters in the East Garo Hills district. Sangma’s complaint, filed with the returning officer and the deputy commissioner of police of West Garo Hills district at Tura, comes within days of the Congress accusing him of impropriety by not publishing the printers’ details in his posters.
The returning officer said that the NTC leader’s election agent had filed the complaint saying the Congress had printed “objectionable posters on communal lines” which have surfaced in East Garo Hills in violation of the code.