The United Democratic Party (UDP) reiterated on Tuesday that the Congress’ attempt to show the party in bad light on the issue of Citizenship Bill would not work in the elections to the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) and Jaiñtia Hills Autonomous District Council (JHADC) in Meghalaya.
The UDP said people knew it was the Congress that had encouraged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to come to the Northeast via Assam.
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Also read: Meghalaya: Mukul Sangma lambasts UDP, NPP over Citizenship Bill
The party also hoped of winning the elections and get majority on its own, and form the new Executive Committee in both the district councils.
The UDP is in war of words with the Congress on the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) issue and the Congress has termed the UDP and other parties, same as the BJP.
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“The citizenship issue has been there since the time of Jawaharlal Nehru who wrote a letter in 1949 to the first chief minister of Assam, Gopinath Bordoloi, advising him to accommodate illegal immigrants in Assam from the erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh),” UDP working president Paul Lyngdoh told reporters here, while exuding confidence that his party would secure majority in both the Councils, and take the lead in forming the new executive committee.
According to Lyngdoh, there is little difference between the BJP and the Congress on the citizenship issue.
“While the BJP tried to push the CAB in order to legalize non-Muslim Bangladeshis, the Congress is worse, by as it brought 10 million Muslim Bangladeshis while also pushing for bringing non-Muslim Bangladeshis,” he alleged.
“Our confidence is such that our first option is to form the executive committee on our own. If not, we will look for other options,” Lyngdoh said while replying to a query whether the UDP and NPP have reached an understanding of forming the executive committee together.
Both the councils will go to polls on Wednesday from 7 am to 4 pm.
The UDP is contesting in 27 out of 29 seats in the KHADC, and 26 seats in the JHADC.
On criminal activities that occurred in his Jaïaw constituency, the UDP and Lyngdoh, who is contesting the district council elections, condemned the attacks on vehicles of Khasi Students Union leader, Donald V. Thabah and the vehicle of the head of Lumkshaid locality.
“The Congress is attempting to insinuate the incident by linking to the elections and blaming that the UDP is behind the incident. How can one link the incident to the elections, and put the blame on us. It is totally unjustified, and we did not see any link to politics. It was reported that three to four incidents on the same night occurred during the hours of power shutdown,” Lyngdoh said while strongly condemning the criminal activities.
He said that the drugs scene in his area is also a matter of grave concern, and miscreants have been taking advantage of the darkness especially during the load shedding period.
Lyngdoh also blamed the Congress for the load shedding in the state, alleging it was the Congress that inked shady power agreement in 2007 with private companies for executing 12 power projects which did not yield any result till date.