Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) said India required a socialist, secular and democratic President to protect the Constitution of India, to bridge the religious divide, to stop misuse of Central government agencies such as NIA, CBI, ED, ECI and judiciary as political tools and weapons and to protect the nation’s institutions.
Ahead of the presidential election scheduled on July 18, NPCC president K Therie noted that all Christian chief ministers of States like Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland were under NDA, while Andhra Pradesh’s CM Jagan Mohan Reddy, a Christian, supported BJP issue-based.
Pointing out that Christian States’ chief ministers had about 6% of the total value of votes and NDA had 48.80% and non-NDA 51.20%, he hoped that they would use their vote to tell BJP that Christians stood for peace, unity and progress. “We believe in non-violence and forgiveness and not hate or violence,” he stressed.
According to the NPCC president, India had lost peace due to religious divide, while the economy was no way better than Sri Lanka. He said only agriculture was helping prevent starvation in the country. He charged the BJP of sucking the citizens’ money through petroleum products, which was responsible for price hike on every material.
Alleging that the “trio Gujarat dictatorship” ruled India, he said they used BJP members as lifeless chessboard pawns as inner democracy was unknown. Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s “Mann Ki Baat” was a one-way traffic that was meant only to hypnotise citizens to follow without questioning, he added.
Mentioning that there was a serious need to check corruption, Therie alleged that BJP had printed several lakhs of crores of rupees from demonetisation. The party claimed that more than 99% of old notes had returned, which was not true as lakhs of crores could not be returned for fear of income tax punishment.
He accused BJP of raising Rafale jet price from Rs 681.7crore to Rs 1,638 crore and looted more than Rs 30,000 crore, while also selling national properties at low prices against high commissions. He alleged that the party demanded commission for every project sanctioned and constructed palatial office building at Delhi at a cost of Rs 700 crore within no time.
He stressed that India needed a President who could check and balance the functioning of Government of India, adding that the country could not afford to have another rubber stamp President.
Admitting that President had no legislative duty, Therie asserted that anti-defection law was applicable to legislative functionaries only and, as such, political parties had no authority to issue whip or direct MLAs and MPs. It was purely an individual’s conscious vote.
He said this was the opportune time for the privileged to express the inner feelings of the people they represented.
Declaring that BJP nominee could be defeated in the presidential election, he mentioned that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had reached out and deliberated on the upcoming election with NPC president Sharad Pawar, TMC supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and some other opposition leaders.
He hoped that Gandhi’s meeting with Banerjee on June 15 would lead to a consensus on nominating the Opposition candidate. He said every MLA and MP’s vote was crucial for the people of the nation.
It may be noted that the value of each vote of an MP is 708, while that of MLAs differed from State to State as per population – with the highest value being 208 for an MLA from UP, while the value of an MLA’s vote from Sikkim was the lowest (7). For Nagaland, each MLA’s vote value is 9.
