Congress stands committed to ‘unity’, BJP wants ‘artificial uniformity': Jairam Ramesh

DIMAPUR: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday said that the party is committed to "unity" while the BJP wants "artificial uniformity".

Addressing media persons here at Congress Bhavan in Dimapur, the AICC general secretary, who arrived in the state during the day to campaign for Congress candidate S Supongmeren Jamir, said the 2024 elections will be the most important one for the people of the country as it will be a "battle between unity and uniformity".

“The Congress wants to strengthen unity by celebrating the country's diversity while the BJP and its allies want to impose artificial uniformity,” he said.

Article 371 (A) was included in the Constitution of India in 1963 when the state of Nagaland was formed, he said, adding that the Article that provides special provisions for Nagaland will "come under attack as the BJP had removed Article 370 from the Constitution that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

“The framework agreement was signed between the Government of India and the NSCN-IM in 2015. However, nine years have gone by and we still don’t know the details of the agreement. The BJP promised during the assembly polls that the election is for a solution but till today there is no solution only confusion and they have fooled the people of Nagaland,” he said.

With all the 60 MLAs joining the government in the state, he wondered if this was democracy.

“The only party keeping democracy in Nagaland and in the country is the Indian National Congress and we will never compromise with BJP. The election is for the future of the democracy,” he said.

Maintaining that the party believes that all regions of Nagaland must see development and the political aspirations of the people of Nagaland must be fulfilled, he said, adding that "imbalance in development must be addressed".

“Regions in every state feel left out of the government, which is a reflection of bad governance. We must balance regional development between states and balance regional development within the state,” he said.

Expressing that the "election in India is not a beauty contest for selecting the prime minister", he said the election is between political parties, party ideologies, and programmes.

“Ours is not an individual-centric democracy but party-centric. When we get the mandate, all parties will sit together and select the prime minister,” he said. Ramesh expressed confidence that the Congress and its allies INDIA will get a clear majority in the Lok Sabha polls.