Senior Leaders in Congress Don’t Have a Voice Now: D.D. Lapang

A CORRESPONDENT

SHILLONG: Veteran politician Dr D.D. Lapang has said that senior Congress leaders in the present setup under party president Rahul Gandhi are being neglected.

Interacting with media persons at his residence on Friday evening, Dr Lapang said that the senior leaders in the AICC no longer have a voice.

The former Chief Minister who last month resigned from the Congress pointed out that senior leaders like Janardhan Dwivedi, Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Ambika Soni and others are no longer in the limelight.

“AICC is a big organisation it can accommodate anybody to work,” the veteran politician said.

He also said that he had served the party for 45 years leaving no stone unturned to see that the party in Meghalaya would be in the position where it is now.

“But now I have reached the stage where my service is being restricted. But I wanted to be a free man to serve,” Dr Lapang said.

The veteran politician informed that recently the state government approached him saying that they would assign a role for him.

“They did not ask me to join any party. What they said is, we came to invite you to join any party but we would like you to be the big uncle of our government and to guide it,” he said.

Dr Lapang also informed that he has accepted the state government’s assignment for him as the chief adviser to the government. “This is one way that I can strengthen my hand and be more effective and also meet more people. Therefore I decided to accept this assignment,” Dr Lapang added. He also informed that he got phone calls from Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong adding that they would be meeting him soon.