Dimapur, September 30 (MExN): Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) president I Imkong today hit out at colleague and NPCC president-contender SI Jamir for the latter claiming majority over the former in the botched September 17 party-polls. Imkong also accused Jamir of withholding PCC members.
“Since the 13th of September, 2010, Shri S.I. Jamir and some senior leaders have confined many members of the PCC in 3 camps. Unfortunately, on 17th September, election to the PCC could not be concluded due to interference of certain undesirable elements which I have already condemned earlier,” Imkong stated in a rejoinder today.
The former Congress Legislature Party leader said whatever number of “the members he has been taking around till date is for everybody to judge for themselves as to whether there is inner democracy in the party as claimed by him.”
Imkong said a large number of PCC members ‘compelled by SI Jamir and group’ have been ‘taken to Delhi, Shillong and Guwahati.’ “If there is no compulsion and if the members were free to exercise their right, then he should release them and let them move freely with family members and party workers. His claim that 5 members had voluntarily offered their support to him in ‘legal papers’ is nothing but an eyewash,” Imkong stated in the rejoinder.
He explained: “He has exposed prevailing mistrust and coercion in his camp because if the support of the 5 Members were ‘voluntary’, there would be no need to bind their so-called voluntary support into a binding legal agreement. In the event the 5 members do not support him, the question arises as to what he is going to do with those ‘legal papers’”?
On the statement that Imkong had ceased to be NPCC president, the rejoinder said his “continued functioning” as president of NPCC is in accordance with the Constitution of the Congress party.
“It appears that Shri S.I. Jamir seems to be in a hurry to become the President by hook or crook for reasons best known to him. Therefore, as a responsible leader, he should respect the democratic ethos of free and fair elections instead of holding the sacred principles of party cohesion to ransom by making hollow statements about inner democracy which he neither respects nor practice.”
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