Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Ladakh Thupstan Chhewang hit out at the party for not fulfilling its 2014 electoral promises, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party president Amit Shah. The seventy-two-year-old had quit the party and had resigned as the MP on Wednesday, November 14.
“In 2014 and its aftermath we had the privilege of you as the prime minister going around the country projecting the first time BJP victories in the Ladakh parliamentary constituency and the Leh hill council as signs of the increasing reach of the party. What could you tell (the) people now?” he asked in his letter.
The Greater Kashmir reported that in his letter, Chhewang said, “Central leaders exhibited little concern for implementing the categorical assurance given at the time of 2014 elections that the demand of the Ladakh region for a Union Territory status would be met within six months. As a local representative my position increasingly became morally and politically untenable.”
He added, “We exposed ourselves to the charge of making false promises even on such sentimental issues as the inclusion of the Bhoti language in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. For last four years I kept on writing to almost all party leaders and also spoke in the national executive meetings reminding all about our commitments to the region but all pleas fell on deaf ears.”
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Chhewang also criticised the party leadership’s functioning — especially that of the state BJP president Ravinder Raina — and reportedly stated that their manner of working led to BJP’s defeat in the elections held in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) in September. He said, “I felt that I had no choice but to keep away from their thoughtless actions in our region. It was strange that they decided to contest all seats wasting party money and thus diverting resources, energy and attention from about half a dozen seats where the party had a winning chance while it had no base in the rest of the Kargil district.”
The former MP also called out the ouster of Dorjay Motup, the party’s chief executive councillor of LHDC, Leh, following October’s civic elections defeat. He said, “The Chief Executive Councillor of the Leh Hill Council has recently been unceremoniously dropped much to the anger and anguish of the party loyalists- all these measures have left the local workers in a state of disarray. These are examples of the total absence of application of mind with the 2019 Parliamentary elections round the corner.”
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(With PTI inputs)