Nagaland Pradesh Youth Congress (NPYC) conducted a workshop on anti-corruption cum ‘kick off ceremony for clean election campaign’. It was held at Congress Bhavan, Kohima, on November 25 evening under the theme “clean election: Youth for change and save Nagaland”. It was conducted against corruption, mis-governance and malpractices and also to advocate for clean elections.
Addressing the gathering, NPCC president, K. Therie said majority of the voters in the state are within the ages of 18 to 40. If the youth become a significant voice for clean elections, avoid proxy-voting and malpractices, Nagaland should see a new ray of hope for better governance and development, he added.
Due to lack of employment policies in the state, Therie lamented that around 150000 youth, including 80,000 educated youth in the state were unemployed.
He said that while the central government has a policy to employ at least 10,000 youth per day across the country, the state government policy for creating employment opportunities was zero percent.
Therie slammed the present government as a partyless government, functioning without political objective and vision for the people. He alleged that they were just there to loot the state exchequer and not for development. He also stated that the vision 2030 document by the state government was a flip-flop document because nothing had been implemented so far. Therie also revealed that, if the present trend of corruption is to be continued by the same government for the next five years, he would retire from his political career. Supporting the clean election campaign, initiated by the Nagaland Baptist Church Council, he stated that, counting all the denominations, there were more than 1,800 churches in the state. If all the church workers decided to go for clean elections, then 15 to 20 percent voters would be impacted, he said.
NPYC president, Vilhousielie Kengurusie, in his key note address, said that the achievements of the present state government could be written down on a single page, but a thousand pages would not be enough to list their failures. He said that the public should also accept blame for the failure of the state government since the public demand money for votes during elections. He urged the youth, especially the educated youth, to strive for a clean election and influence the rest of society.
He also stated that corruption in the state is at its highest level, and mentioned that there are protests, agitations and unrest by many organizations in the state, due to corruption. In this situation, he called upon the youth to be wiser in electing the political leaders. The kick off programme was chaired by District Youth Congress Kohima, president Seyie, while short speeches were delivered by District Congress Committee, Kohima, president, Kevi Vizo. The programme was attended by the members of youth congress organizations and All Nagaland College Students’ Union members and others.