‘Threat to secularism is the biggest issue at hand,’ says Apok
Morung Express News
Dimapur | May 24
The NPF diatribe against its rival – the ruling NDPP-led PDA government continued as the TR Zeliang-led party’s Lok Sabha bye-election 2018 campaign trail touched Dimapur on May 24.
Addressing a public rally at the DDSC stadium today, leader of the opposition NPF ridiculed the PDA government’s ‘Common Minimum Programme’ (CMP) as no more than paper promises and trained his gun at Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, who relinquished his Lok Sabha membership resulting in the conduct of the bye-election.
Zeliang said that the PDA’s CMP included, besides others, a pledge for good roads, renouncing VIP culture and bringing about transparency and accountability. Referring to the pledge to repair roads in all the district headquarters within 60 days of forming the PDA government, he held that two months on there are no good roads to be seen. He also questioned as to how transparently the ruling government has doled out the funds for the repairs. On the pledge to do away with VIP Culture, he said that the PDA government has only contradicted itself by appointing coalition MLAs and unelected party leaders to positions of Advisors, Ministers of State and even to posts normally held by bureaucrats.
“They (PDA) talk one thing and act something else,” he said.
Training the gun at his on-off rival, he held CM Neiphiu Rio accountable for wasting public fund as a result of Rio resigning as Lok Sabha member and forcing the conduct of a bye-election so close to the Parliamentary elections scheduled for April 2019. “Consider the impact on the state’s economy and the ex-chequer. He went to Delhi but returned because he didn’t get anything.”
The electorate, he said, should know the difference between the NPF and the NDPP. Regarding the NPF as the original Naga regional party of the state around since 1963 and committed to resolving the Indo-Naga political issue, he held the NDPP as a party with no real regional or state-centric commitment.
He further accused the NDPP of siding with a theocratic BJP, a coalition in which the latter is dictating the former.
The NPF’s candidate to the vacant Lok Sabha seat, C. Apok Jamir regarded the bye election as extraordinary set on making history. According to him, the biggest issue at hand is secularism and the threat the BJP-led coalition at the Centre is posing to democratic values on which the Indian Constitution was founded. Stating that the NPF stands by its commitment to the Naga issue, protecting “our Naga identity” and upholding secularism, he said, “Today is a challenge for all of us to raise our hands, hold our head high so that the right of our people is protected.” Terming the NPF as an active supporter and facilitator towards resolving the Naga political issue, he said that the party will leave no stone unturned to ensure that it is resolved.
