Gangtok: Pawan Kumar Chamling, the former chief minister on Monday charged his successor Prem Singh Tamang of using public money on ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) and his family members and claimed that the state’s economy is dead under the present dispensation.
Chamling, who is the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) president, alleged that the ruling party has been coercing the people through threats and allurement to join it and not on the basis of the inclusive policy as claimed by it and Tamang.
SKM hit back at Chamling for making “baseless and slanderous comments” against the ruling party and Tamang in particular.
“The SKM is playing a very dirty game to bring the people from other parties to sell its numbers,” Chamling, who has launched the ‘Sikkim Bachao Abhiyan’ to expose the alleged misdeeds of the Tamang government.
“Sikkim’s economy is dead. There are no jobs but only high inflation and a complete collapse of the rural economy. The money has been drained into the SKM and P S Golay’s families,” he said in a statement.
Tamang is also known as P S Golay.
Chamling, a five-term chief minister, said the trend has to be “stopped immediately” and SDF must work hard to win the mandate again in 2024. “Only then, we will be able to restore Sikkim’s wealth,” he said.
Elaborating on alleged coercion of people to join the ruling party, Chamling said the common people are being forced to join SKM with the allurement of some welfare schemes.
“Youths are allured with the fake promise of jobs. The families of government employees are intimidated into joining the ruling party lest their employed family members are transferred,” he claimed.
The families of ad hoc, muster roll employees and those employed under the ‘One Family, One Job’ scheme were being forced to join SKM as they will be sacked otherwise, he claimed.
The former chief minister claimed SDF leaders and workers are being offered cash for joining the ruling party. “There are brokers involved. Each broker who brings an opposition leader to the SKM is offered 15 per cent of the total amount offered to the joinees,” he alleged.
Criticising Tamang’s ongoing ‘Janata Bhet Ghat’ (interaction with the people) programme, Chamling said that he was trying to hoodwink the people with false promises after forgetting them for the last four years. The chief minister has been too busy pleasing his bosses outside Sikkim and has totally forgotten the pains and struggles of the people of Sikkim for the last four years, he said.
SKM leader and its women front president Kala Rai came down heavily on Chamling for making “baseless and slanderous comments” against the ruling party and Tamang in particular. If the state economy was floundering then the blame should rest on Chamling who ruled the state for 25 years, she said.
EASTMOJO PREMIUM
Help sustain honest journalism.
On Chamling’s allegation about corruption and abuse of powers by Tamang, she said that if it was so then the former chief minister and SDF were free to knock on the doors of the judiciary for justice.
On the charge of the ruling party bribing people to join it, Rai said that the people had joined SKM “in droves” on their own when it was in opposition and so there was no need to offer allurements or threaten anyone to do so.
Also Read | Bumrah ruled out of ODI series against Sri Lanka after back injury