BJP promise direct funding ahead of polls

***BJP state president Shibun Lyngdoh and other leaders releasing the party manifesto on Friday***

By Our Reporter

SHILLONG, DEC 2: With an eye on the seven vacant seats in the two district councils in Khasi and Jaintia hills, the state unit of the BJP has assured direct funding to tribal villages under the three ADCs and constitutional recognition for traditional institutions/heads, and protection of land rights in the five-point manifesto released on Friday ahead of the upcoming December 13 bye-elections.

The party also said the campaign for the ADC by-poll will also highlight the centrally sponsored schemes of BJP led NDA central government.

Addressing newsmen after launching the manifesto, BJP state president Shibun Lyngdoh said, “We want to bring these agendas to the people to ensure that the party should be voted in the upcoming by-polls as well as 2019 elections.”

Lyngdoh said the party is hopeful of clinching seats in the bye-polls as the people have become fans of Prime Minister Narendra Modi because of several people-friendly schemes including demonetization.

Lyngdoh said the party’s objective during the by-poll is to inform people, who will be tribal voters, about many schemes launched by the centre as awareness on in the rural areas is negligible.

Elaborating more on the party’s commitment, Lyngdoh said, “The party shall make serious efforts for the establishment of state finance commission which shall recommend measures about adequate funding to the villages with the participation of the dorbar shnongs under the supervisions of the district councils.

“We in Meghalaya have suffered loss of hundreds of crores of rupees because of lack of direct funding,” he said.

Lyngdoh felt that proper measures needs to be taken in the state so that this kind of loss, though negligence, should not increase.

Attacking the Congress, Lyngdoh said the party which had been in power at the centre, the state and the district councils for so long ‘have so far failed to provide constitutional recognition to the village councils and their heads rendering these bodies powerless’.

The BJP is contesting in all the six council constituencies in the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council and one in the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council.