NEDA will rise to the occasion, hopes BJP Assam Pradesh

By our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, July 15: The BJP Assam Pradesh hailed the formation of the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) and expressed its hope that it would rise to the occasion to fill the long-felt vacuum of a political conglomerate in the region. In a statement issued to the press today, the State BJP said that it was hopeful of the NEDA playing an important role in the political scerio in the tion from the Northeast. “The vacuum of a tiol political body in the Northeast India has been long-felt. However, the formation of NEDA by the BJP and nine other parties from the region is set to fill that vacuum. We hope that the NEDA will rise to the occasion to play an important role at the tiol-level politics from the Northeast,” the BJP said in a statement issued its spokespersons Rupam Goswami, Dilip Saikia and Aparajita Bhuyan. The NEDA was conceived on May 24 this year after the swearing-in of the Sarbanda Sonowal-led government in Guwahati. It was formed by taking BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma as the convener. It formally got its shape on July 13 when it had its first political conclave in the city and came out with Guwahati Declaration in the presence of BJP’s tiol president Amit Shah. The conclave, which was attended by ten political parties of the region, was unimous on the issue of peace, security and development in the region. Amit Shah was crystal clear when he said that the prime aim of NEDA was to develop the Northeast on a par with the rest of the country and to create employment avenues for the unemployed in the region. The region, according to Shah, has a rich stock of tural resources that have not been exploited even after over 60 years of independence of the country. The failure on the part of the government at the Centre to exploit the resources of the region, Shah said, has made the region lag far behind, leading to insurgency in the region. With the BJP taking lead with the NEDA in the region, Shah said, the region will make strides on all fronts and keep pace with the rest of the States of the tion.  One of the aims of NEDA is to make the region, which has as many as 25 parliamentary constituencies, free the clutch of the Congress. Meanwhile, the State BJP is worried over the outbursts of former Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta on NEDA. The Saffron party here said that the AGP is also a member of the NEDA. However, the statements being made by Mahanta on NEDA continue to hurt the people of the region, the State BJP said.