SHILL/TURA, MAR 20: The battle for the Tura Lok Sabha seat is warming up as two Garo hills biggies- former Lok Sabha speaker and NPP candidate Purno A Sangma and Congress leader who is also the chief minister Mukul Sangma campaigning for Congress nominee Daryl William Cheran Momin- are now engaged in verbal duel that promises to get interesting and intriguing before reaching a boiling point soon.
Though chief minister Mukul Sangma is not the Lok Sabha candidate but the Congress nominee Daryl William Momin- who is all of twenty-five years old and a political greenhorn- is his protégé and, therefore, is raring to go all out to defeat the Garo hills strongman and NPP candidate Purno A Sangma who won the Tura parliamentary seat for eight consecutive times till he decided to put make his daughter Agatha K Sangma the MP in the last parliamentary elections only to contest himself this time.
The stake for both Purno and Mukul is high for the Tura Lok Sabha seat. If the chief minister is looking to repeat the success of the 2013 assembly elections wherein the NPP was routed winning only one seat of the 24 seats in Garo hills , the former Lok Sabha speaker will now try to reclaim his lost domain and prove that he still retains his charisma and is rightfully the Garo hills strongman.
To put it bluntly the Tura Lok Sabha elections is not about the Congress and the NPP but it is the barometers that will test the popularity of Purno and Mukul which will directly impact their respective party standing in Garo hills.
Therefore Thursday became the opening day for both the leaders to unleash tirades against each others. If Purno called Mukul the “chief minister of Ampati” Mukul termed the former Lok Sabha speaker’s decision to contest the parliamentary polls as “selfish.”
If Purno blamed Mukul for the “utter chaos”( lawlessness in Garo hills) during his first elections rally at Adokgre in North Garo hills district on Thursday, Mukul told reporters in Shillong that Purno is not bothered of building and encouraging young leaders as he had “thrown his own daughter away by deciding to contest the Tura Lok Sabha seat himself.”
Mukul said if people do not care for the career of his own son or daughter, sorry to say how he will be sensitive to the future of younger generation of the state as a whole.
Even as Purno told the public meeting that the “Congress is in ICU and is aware that it would not survive the upcoming election” Mukul asserted that the Congress party is giving younger generation a chance to served the state by deciding to allot ticket to a youth (Daryl). He said, “The future must have better leaders than us.”- Bureau reports
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