BJP blames ruling parties for encouraging ‘vote buying’ in Meghalaya

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaNovember 4, 2021

The state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Ernest Mawrie on Thursday blamed ruling parties in the past including the opposition Congress for encouraging the “practice of vote buying” in Meghalaya.

Mawrie told reporters that the practice of vote buying started in Meghalaya from 2003 onwards.

“Who started this you know better. All the ruling parties, especially Congress, are the ones who taught our people to gather votes by paying money…it is a very bad practice,” he said.

He also recalled that prior to 2003 it was the public who used to donate money to the contesting candidates and said, “But now it has become just the opposite.”

Mawrie’s statement also came after the BJP had witnessed a setback in the just concluded Rajabala bye election when its candidate Kingstone B Marak forfeited his security deposit by getting only 333 votes.

When asked, the BJP president said, “…many reports we received that some of the political parties used money, they bought votes but we in BJP we are not in favour of that practice.”

Stating that BJP’s main agenda is development, he said, “We appeal to the people in that constituency as well as the state as a whole if you vote for us, we will give you our service, we will give you development, we will give you all the schemes.”

“I request not only the three constituencies, which just had bypolls, but this is my simple appeal to the voters that we should do away with this practice of vote buying,” he added.

Mawrie further informed that fighting money power would be part of the party’s preparation for the upcoming 2023 Assembly elections.

“We will go to all constituencies from wherever we are contesting and appeal to the people with the development agenda. We will not buy votes. You see, that’s why we follow the system of zero tolerance against corruption so when we contest elections we start to buy or capture votes by paying people to vote for our party then what you expect us to do.

So let us go for free and no corruption even in elections also. That is our ideology from the party,” he stated.

On the poll debacle, the BJP president claimed that the candidate of the party was very new and that time was also very limited for preparation.

“The mondal in Rajabala is newly constituted not even one month. After we formed the mondal, our office mondal president and office bearers tried to reach to the people of Rajabala to strengthen the party but suddenly the bye election was declared. So we don’t have much time to go to the people of that constituency to appeal to them to vote for us,” he said.

He said that decision to field the candidate for the Rajabala bypoll was after taking into consideration that in the last elections to the GHADC, one of the party candidate had managed to secured 3,300 votes from some parts of Rajabala constituency and another candidate secured almost 4,000 votes from plain belt areas including Rajabala and Phulbari.

“From that angle we from the party have come to the conclusion that since we gathered a good number of votes in the last MDC election so we have to put a candidate to contest in this election but it is unfortunate we could not succeed,” he said.

To another question, Mawrie said the Rajabala bypoll was a trial for the party since it was contesting for the first time from the constituency.

“We hope we learn a lesson from here so we will prepare for the upcoming general elections in 2023,” he said.

As part of the preparation for the 2023 elections, Mawrie said that in Garo Hills, the BJP has divided the region into hill area and plain area.

“During last 2018 election, we have also contested most of the seats in the plain belt and all the candidates secured a good number of votes so our party organization is very strong in the plain belt and we have got the district incharge and the convener of the plain belt. We have segregated the hill area and the plain belt area so now we are working to strengthen the party organization from time to time for preparing the party for this coming elections,” he added.