[ Bengia Ajum ]
ITANAGAR, 4 Mar: In yet another blow to the Congress party, one of its senior leaders and Mebo MLA Lombo Tayeng joined the BJP on Monday.
Tayeng, along with independent MLA Chakat Aboh, joined the saffron party in the presence of its state chief Biyuram Wahge.
Tayeng was the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader in the state assembly. He had even participated in the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
He joins two other MLAs – Ninong Ering and Wangling Lowangdong – who have also left the Congress to join the BJP.
With this, only Sagalee MLA Nabam Tuki remains a Congress MLA. Tuki is also the president of the Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC). In the 2019 assembly elections, Tuki, Tayeng, Ering and Lowangdong had been elected on Congress tickets.
Talking to the media, Tayeng claimed that the Congress party is a “sinking ship.”
“How long can I sail in this sinking ship? I cannot continue to be captain of this sinking ship anymore. I will work for the BJP, and it does not matter whether I get a ticket or not,” said Tayeng.
Meanwhile, the APCC said that it is not surprised by Tayeng’s jumping to the saffron camp.
“It was already known to us that he too would join the saffron brigade. His performance as a CLP leader was poor. He never raised any strong point against mismanagement of the ruling party and we had an inkling that he was going to join the BJP at some point,” APCC general secretary Kon Jirjo Jotham said in a statement.
The APCC, however, questioned the timing of Tayeng’s decision to leave the party. “After enjoying full power, both as an INC MLA and the CLP leader of the Congress party for the last five years, he has deserted the Congress to join the saffron party at the end of his legislature tenure. This is a time when the Congress needed his services, support, efforts and guidance. His move has only degraded politics in the state,” Jotham said.
The Congress also alleged that “shifting loyalty for political gain is akin to a criminal act by cheating the party and the public.”
“They failed to leave behind a sound political legacy. What the youngsters learn from these runaway MLAs will be nothing but cheating, double-crossing, Aaya Ram Gaya Ram and using electoral politics as small-scale industries to earn and build their economic empires,” the APCC stated.
Further, the Congress claimed that the party will not be affected by the move of these MLAs to desert the grand old party.
“The election in 2024 is purely an electoral war between two warring ideological parties. One is the fake nationalists or pseudo-nationalists, and it is called the fascist saffronised party, and the other one is the secular, democratic party, which is original and safeguards the Constitution and protects India, and this party is the one and only Congress,” the party added.
