Party united, reshuffle has a purpose: Sangma

Jun 07, 2011 |

SHILLONG

Tags:

Claiming that the Congress in Meghalaya was united despite the rumblings, chief minister Mukul Sangma on Tuesday said the reshuffle in the Cabinet effected today had a “purpose”.

“If the party is not united, the government would have fallen by now,” Sangma told reporters after the swearing-in of four new ministers inducted by dropping four rebel Congress MLAs.

He said the reshuffle had a “purpose" and that it was needed to ensure that there is effective coherence in the Cabinet which will deliver in conformity with the aspirations of the people.

He was obviously referring to the virtual non-cooperation by at least four Cabinet ministers due to which, according to sources, the CM has been unable to hold a Cabinet meeting since March 28.

“On Tuesday if we compare Meghalaya with other states, we are very backward. We are centuries behind. It (reshuffle) was very important for acceleration of development,” Sangma said.

He said that he has been informing the party high command of the developments.

Asked if the four dropped ministers do not resign, Sangma said, “If they do not resign, it is called withdrawal of pleasure from the council of ministers. In other words we call it dropped”.

Sangma was facing a revolt from 15 of the total 28 Congress legislators who were unhappy at his “autocratic way of functioning”.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/78252" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-1006a4f02f59187ccd2260c761e10ac5" value="form-1006a4f02f59187ccd2260c761e10ac5" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80537076" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>