Opposition NPF on Friday accused chief minister Neiphiu Rio of spreading canards against it, while clarifying that it (NPF) never boycotted Statehood Day on December 1, 2018, the Hornbill Festival and Republic Day celebration as reportedly alleged by the chief minister at the consultative meeting held at Chumukedima on Thursday.
In a communiqué, the party pointed out that the Republic Day celebration in the State was boycotted by Naga Students’ Federation as per the directive of North East Students’ Organisation.
Stating that the “fabricated and wild allegations” of Rio were made with the intention of confusing the general public, NPF dismissed them outright and condemned in the strongest term.
Instead of apologising before the Naga citizens, the opposition party said Rio had convened the consultative meeting to cover up his mistakes that had further confused the general public. It said that despite being a former member of Parliament, he lacked understanding of House proceedings.
NPF recalled that when the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was introduced in Lok Sabha on July 15, 2016 and subsequently referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on August 12, 2016, Rio was the lone MP representing Nagaland in the House. He was Lok Sabha member from May 2014 to February 2018.
It wondered what could be the purpose of allowing Rio to represent Naga people in Lok Sabha, if he could not facilitate such affairs between his people and Parliament.
The party said it was Rio’s bounden duty to consult and take into confidence the voice of his people as the Bill was referred to JPC for examination with direction for onward submission to Speaker for its consideration and passing in Parliament, which took over a year.
“Ignorance and failure on the part of Rio only points to the fact that he was hardly in Parliament as he was busy masterminding crisis, one after another, to topple the then NPF-led DAN government in the State,” the communiqué alleged. NPF pointed out that both the cabinet meetings held on June 5, 2018 and January 7, 2019 did not oppose the Bill, while NDPP member in Lok Sabha Tokheho Yepthomi went ahead and voted in its favour on January 8.
Mentioning that it was only on January 28 that Rio and his cabinet decided to oppose the Bill in order to attend the North East Regions’ Political Parties Convention at Guwahati, the party added that a chopper was hired the following day to ferry NDPP leaders, including Chingwang Konyak, Neiba Ndang, Chuba Chang, Nungsang Aier, TL Merry and Tali Pongen, to attend the meeting. It alleged that the NDPP group managed to attend the meeting for a mere 15 minutes by arriving around 11:45 am, 15 minutes before the meeting concluded.
NPF explained that a coalition government was a collaboration of several political parties that reduced the dominance of one single party, adding that the parties consulted and co-operated with each other to come to a common understanding.
“Sadly, on an important issue like the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, the NDPP-led PDA government never consulted its coalition partners like NPP and JDU, which were strongly against the Bill from day one,” it alleged.
As his government bowed down before the cry of the public and decided to reject the Bill, NPF also asked the chief minister whether his party’s Lok Sabha member who voted in favour of the Bill withdraw his vote.