ITANAGAR, Feb 12: The Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) criticized Chief Minister Pema Khandu for coming out against the citizenship amendment bill (CAB) “at the eleventh hour.”
It also raised doubts over Khandu’s leadership and questioned the sudden shift in his decision just before the assembly election.
“Khandu must have taken expert suggestions to pull strings of the BJP heads at the Centre and to save the BJP’s political crisis in the state,” APCC spokesperson Chera Taya said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
He accused the CM of maintaining a stoic silence over the hue and cry in the state that occurred because of the CAB, and claimed that the CM had not bothered to inform the prime minister of the country of the consequences of the bill.
Terming Khandu’s action of “defending the CAB till yesterday” as “step-brotherly,” Taya said the Khandu-led BJP government had earlier supported the CAB by saying that the bill would “rebuild a balanced demography” and had accused those protesting against the bill of having vested interests.
Referring to the security forces deployed during the Congress’ recent protest rally, Taya accused the CM of “using government machinery and radically deploying paramilitary forces to vanquish the peoples’ movement against the CAB.”
The APCC spokesperson also claimed that the Khandu-led government was plotting “a huge conspiracy against the people and the state, as he has not come widely open to show his support to the people’s movement against the CAB.”
