DIMAPUR, JUNE 29 (MExN): The Opposition Congress party in Nagaland has stated that Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio has “exposed his own insecurity arising out of his despotic grip on the affairs of the NPF party for the past decade”.
The Congress has also forewarned the DAN legislators that “by blindly supporting Rio to perpetrate the loot of the state exchequer and propagate divisive agenda to rule the state, they are willfully writing their own political obituaries”. “The DAN legislators will therefore have to exercise their political wisdom for the sake of posterity before it is too little too late,” stated a press note issued by the Media Cell of the Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC).
The NPCC made these statements while responding to the Chief Minister’s statement while addressing the Central Executive Council meeting of the NPF. The Congress termed as unfortunate that the Chief Minister chose to indulge and comment on the internal affairs of the Congress party in the state, when matters of governance needs urgent attention with total breakdown of the state machinery under the NPF led DAN govt.
“By taking potshots at the Congress, the Chief Minister has exposed his own insecurity arising out of his despotic grip on the affairs of the NPF party for the past decade,” it stated. Terming it as an established fact, the press note stated that the Congress party in Nagaland has been rooted through inner party democracy, where leaders starting from the lowest level are elected and every potential leader can aspire to grow and lead at one point or the other.
“The NPF on the other hand functions under the authoritarian regime of Chief Minister Rio where the system of election in its party is more of selection with dissenting voices muffled.” The NPCC also mentioned about the “jumbo sized party organization which is prominently visible by the presence of numerous vehicles on the road displaying the nameplate of NPF functionaries and consuming the resources meant for development of the state.”
Therefore, the NPCC points that the Chief Minister has no moral authority to comment on the internal affairs of the Congress party in Nagaland when he runs the NPF party as his personal fiefdom with scant regards for inner party democracy.
Stating that the NPF led DAN will always parrot the “overwhelming people’s mandate” with 52 members in the current legislative assembly, however, this has also become a predicament with the problem of plenty and therefore it is envisaged that sooner or later, DAN-III will collapse on the weight of its own, stated the NPCC.
The press note also claimed that the Congress led UPA returning to power at the Centre for the third consecutive time in 2014 “can never be halted with the main opposition party, the BJP unable to extricate itself from the divisive agenda it propagated to polarize the nation and catapult itself as the main opposition party in the early nineties”.
The NPCC went on to state that the Congress party which is over 125 year old and called the grand old party in the country “has enough room to accommodate diverse views, agendas and aspirations for the betterment of the people and the state and therefore the party can never be written off easily as desired by Chief Minister Rio”.
