Shillong, Dec 24: Meghalaya Congress chief Vincent H Pala on Friday said there is growing infightings within the ruling Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) ahead of the 2023 Assembly polls.

“The infighting among the coalition partners of the MDA will be more and more towards the elections. On that ground also Congress will have a mileage where we are working unitedly within the party to fight against the other parties,” Pala told reporters.

He was referring to the recent complaint filed by the United Democratic Party (UDP) to the CEC against the ruling National People’s Party (NPP) for allegedly misusing the government’s schemes – FOCUS and FOCUS+.

“We agree with the UDP which has lodged a complaint against the NPP because they are in the government, they know better than us,” Pala said.

The Congress chief further slammed the BJP and NPP for making false promises to the people of Meghalaya. “The people will no longer trust the BJP or the NPP as they have no shame in giving false promises,” he said.

He cited that the BJP lied when it assured in its 2018 election manifesto to restart coal mining within 180 days while NPP did nothing to fulfil its promises to conduct many job recruitments.

Further, he said the BJP also lied by not withdrawing support to the MDA government and not sending the ED and CBI to probe into various allegations of corruption against the government.

When asked, Pala admitted that not only MLAs but even candidates of the party are getting poached by other parties and said that most of the candidates of the BJP and NPP are ex-Congress leaders.

“Congress is like a manufacturing industry in the sense that we train and we educate but somebody comes and buys them but we still have enough candidates with us so we are not really worried,” he said.

He said that the BJP has been trying to organize itself for five years in Meghalaya but still nobody is ready to fight from its ticket adding “so they have no other option but to try to lure away the people who are in the Congress.”