Shillong, July 13: Hitting back at former chief minister Mukul Sangma and Congress spokesperson Zenith Sangma for constantly demanding resignation of incumbent Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma at the slightest of opportunity, the National People’s Party (NPP) on Tuesday slammed the leaders and asked Mukul to step down as the Leader of Opposition (LO) for his alleged involvement in the “scams” related to the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL).
The NPP reaction comes a day after the Congress spokesperson Zenith Sangma demanded the removal of Conrad as CM due to the alleged corruption in the MeECL.
Terming the Congress’ statement as “laughable”, NPP spokesperson Nickey Nongkhlaw said, “It is in fact Mukul who should step down from the position of the leader of opposition for his shameful acts and scams which he committed when he was in power.”
He said the reason why MeECL is their favourite topic is because they understand the corruption that took place in MeECL during their party’s 8-year regime and they know it is a challenge for anyone to recover the amount in a short time.
MeECL almost privatized in 2017
The NPP leader also accused Mukul Sangma of coming close to privatizing the MeECL in 2017 when the Congress was in power, when he signed deals with Renew Joule Private Limited to take away the power department’s mandate of setting up power plants.
According to him, Mukul had targeted Ri-Bhoi district, Mendipathar and Ampati for this privatisation deal.
“In the same year, he signed deals with ETA Star Infrastructure Ltd, Brijraj Power Metallics Ltd and MSGC Power Ltd for taking away small thermal power projects of MeECL and handing them over to these private companies.”
He alleged that Mukul gave away huge amount of MeECL’s money to these companies, literally making the department crippled with debt. The deals were called off only when members of the society raised concerns and complaints but the damage was already done.
“What sort of an arrangement did Mukul have with these private players? Why did he use MeECL’s money for a private deal? While he may come up with another lie to defend this move of his, there is a known explanation to this,” he said.
Handing over projects to NEEPCO
Nongkhlaw further added that Mukul, after causing damage to the MeECL by using private players, further put the power department in jeopardy by handing over the cancelled projects to NEEPCO.
He said this further dealt a damage to the MeECL as that meant having a financial obligation towards the NEEPCO for this development.
“No wonder power cuts were rampant during Mukul’s time, stretching to four months every year, because he put MeECL in such a bad financial position that it did not have any more money left to fulfil the obligations of the bad agreements Congress had signed in 2007.”
“For Mukul and his brother to lecture on the power department is simply very ironic. In fact, if they had some amount of guilt left in them for deliberately misleading the public for all these years, they would not have contested elections at all,” Nongkhlaw stated.
