Shillong: BJP ticket aspirant and former IPS officer M Kharkrang have said that he joined the saffron party in September 2022 by taking VRS, and he has a lot of expectations from the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He will also like to contribute to nation-building.
Talking to Organiser, he unveiled his priorities and roadmap as a future legislator and said fighting the drug menace and improving the rates of conviction against criminals will be his focused and determined approach.
“In Assam, since BJP came to power, they have no insurgency problem. And whatever they had, a lot of them surrendered. We need to bring these things in Meghalaya,” he said. Drug menace and peddling are serious challenges, and they are serious as conviction rates are meagre. Moreover, on drugs, there is no effective coordination between police forces in all Northeastern states.
“The problem is not only affecting Meghalaya; it is affecting all other states in our region. A major handicap is all police forces are acting in silos,” he said, adding, “while we do not have regular coordination between states, the drug cartel is interstate”.
In this context, he said a person might be arrested in Mizoram on drug-related cases, and he may have contacts in Shillong. Still, the Meghalaya police will have no information.
He said this would have to be addressed, which can be highlighted better by a BJP MLA.
To a question, he admitted that though Meghalaya is a matrilineal society, the crime against women, including rape, in Meghalaya is than, say, Nagaland, a male chauvinist community.
“The conviction rate is very low and so we are not able to send the right signal against the perpetrators of various crimes,” he said.
Kharkrang, keen to contest on a BJP ticket from Shillong North, said, “You should note we have such low conviction as we do not have the right kind of prosecution”.
These ought to be organised, and the right kind of payment has to be made to the lawyers who take up police cases.
“We need to ensure that protectors and assistant public prosecutors ought to be in government’s pay roll….which is not the case today,” he said.
Kharkrang’s entry into the BJP has not been smooth without political oneupmanship.
In 2018, BJP nominee J Antonious Lyngdoh polled 5166 votes in Shillong North, but after Kharkrang joined the lotus parry, Lyngdoh quit.
Moreover, there is another ticket aspirant Michael Kharsyntiew. Michael has been in the BJP for the last eight years, but he had contested from another constituency unsuccessfully and has now started working in North Shillong.
