BJP will not play big brother in Meghalaya, says CM Conrad Sangma

Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma took over early this month by bringing in a government formed with the help of a bouquet of regional coalition partners and the BJP. He talks of the challenges and the work ahead of him. Edited excerpts:  

You formed the government in Meghalaya with the BJP as a key ally. While there are obvious benefits of being partners with a party in power in the Centre, do you also think that the BJP might act as a big brother to other partners?

I don’t think so; till now they have not interfered in the functioning of the government. We have seen the ministers and central leadership come to Meghalaya, and I can tell you that after that none of them have called me even once to ask me to do one thing or the other. It is very clear that they want a government run by the people, and by all the coalition partners with their active participation. BJP is of course an important partner, but so are the others. BJP has not at all played a big brother role and they will not in the future. 

The party has come to power with the help of other parties; the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) is a rainbow coalition of a range of parties from the political spectrum. How do you intend to keep them all together?

What brought all of us together is that we were all fighting against the Congress. A lot of people felt that the leadership of the Congress government was not living up to their expectations. I don’t deny that a coalition has its challenges and complexities.  Leaders from all the parties are keen on working together. We have been having threadbare discussions on the functioning of the government and have spent a lot of time laying the foundation of the coalition, trying not to leave any critical issues behind. We tried to neutralise as much of the disagreements in the first week, and it was a tough first week for us. All the alliance partners will keep up their commitments, I’m particular that whatever we do, we must carry everyone along with a united decision. 

What are the priorities after your government has taken over? 

Even before the elections, before we formed the government, I was clear that the government’s priority should been on ensuring that there’s good governance. I’m sitting on a seat that I had not thought I would occupy. There were a lot of schemes in the state and central level but were not implemented properly. Good governance, good implementation, good accountability and transparency will be our focus. This will in turn improve the work culture. We will prioritise work on infrastructure, including on roads, power, water and telecom. The verticals of social issues like social welfare, health, jobs for youth are other areas. Our government will create socio-economic opportunities in fields like food processing, agriculture, tourism, and sports. 

The government is preparing the budget right now, and the state is reeling under a huge debt. What are the focus areas?

The budget process is quite complicated and the exercise had started in November, with district level and department level budgets being evaluated to culminate into the state budget. We felt that at this point, we will not go into details and disturb what has been planned. However, we are adding some of our own areas of importance into it. I think that in any budget fiscal discipline is very important. We will ensure that every money spent will have a productive accountability.