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A shocked Congress on Friday described losing 43 of its 44 MLAs in Arunachal Pradesh to a BJP ally as “foul play on democracy by (BJP president) Amit Shah and (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi”.
While the BJP ostensibly kept a distance from the developments as the Congress MLAs shifted to its regional ally, the ruling party’s main point man and convenor of the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), Himanta Biswa Sarma, clearly said the Congress turncoats will be part of the BJP-headed NEDA in the North-East.
Embarrassingly for the Congress, even the newly-elected Chief Minister Pema Khandu, hand-picked by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to replace Nabam Tuki, joined the rest of the 42 MLAs in migrating to the PPA. They will now be part of the NEDA, which is run by former Congress leader from Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Significantly, Shah was in Manipur earlier this week with party general secretary Ram Madhav. BiswaSarma too remained with the top party leaders for a long time.
On Friday, the moment news broke of the Congress shifting wholesale to the PPA, Biswa Sarma was active on Twitter.
“CM Arunachal Pradesh, Shri Prema Khandu has informed me that 43 out of 44 Congress legislators merged with the PPA today,” he tweeted. He also underlined that PPA is part of NEDA and hence part of larger NDA spread in the North-East.
“People’s Party of Arunachal Pradesh is a constituent of the NEDA,” he said. He later told a press conference that the Congress is losing base everywhere in the North-East and even warned that “political realignment” is possible in Left-ruled Tripura. “You can expect some developments in Tripura as well,” he said.
The BJP has thrown an open challenge that it will pluck the Congress out of every State in the border region. Arunachal BJP president Tapir Gao said: “We are happy that Narendra Modi’s dream of Congress-mukt Bharat is becoming a reality now.”
The Congress was livid at what AICC general secretary CP Joshi and spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala described as “murder of democracy”.
“PM Modi and BJP’s foul play on democracy has come a full circle. The PPA is the illegitimate child of the BJP’s diabolical design to decimate democracy.
“The mandate of the people of Arunachal, who voted for the Congress, has been robbed in broad daylight. The gross and rampant misuse of money power has finally delivered an immoral government of opportunists and turncoats,” said Surjewala.
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