Congress hopes to win 20 Lok Sabha seats in North East

New Delhi: Giving a clear indication of its increased focus on the North East ahead of next Lok Sabha polls, Congress today said it aims at winning over 20 of the total 25 parliamentary seats in the region for which the UPA government has announced a slew of developmental measures. “Coming election will bring good news for Congress in the North East,” Union Minister Paban Singh Ghatowar said while dismissing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as “no challenge” to the party in the region. A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reviewed various infrastructure projects and earmarked Rs 600 crore for railway network in the region, Ghatowar held a press conference at the AICC headquarters, reiterating Congress’ commitment to overall development of northeastern states.[caption id=“attachment_970715” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Union Minister Paban Singh Ghatowar. Image courtesy PIB[/caption] Top leadership of Congress has been focusing on development of the region and party president Sonia Gandhi has also taken up the issues related to infrastructure development there with the prime minister earlier. “Gandhi has been taking continuous interest in the development of the region,” Ghatowar, the Minister for Development of Northeastern Region, said. Maintaining that the GDP growth in the North East has registered an upward trend in the last nine years, Ghatowar said, “One of the most important reason for this acceleration is the sharp increase in devolution of funds by the Centre for the region which has seen a growth of around 2.5 times more in 2011-12 as compared to 2004-05 when the UPA came to power.” Ghatowar, who hails from Assam, though ruled out early Lok Sabha elections, and expressed confidence that the party will win more than 20 seats in eight states of the region, including Sikkim which together has a total of 25 seats. “Currently, we have 13 Lok Sabha seats in the region while three others are held by our supporting parties. We are confident of getting more than 20 seats in the Lok Sabha polls,” he said. He said that for the first time in the last 15 years, Congress has formed a government in Meghalaya and Manipur on its sole strength while it got more than 75 percent seats in civic body polls in Guwahati. To a question about the drive against “doubtful” voters in Assam, Ghatowar said Congress has been maintaining that minorities should not be harassed while driving out illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Listing UPA’s achievements in the NE region, he said the Centre has brought a number of insurgent groups to the negotiating table as it believes in a policy of peace with development and not in “mere peace talks”. He said a whopping Rs 3.60 lakh crore has been earmarked for northeastern states in the 12th five year plan against Rs 1.84 lakh crore in the 11th plan. “The prime minister and the Congress leadership have been taking steps for overall development of the region,” he said, while giving details of a number of initiatives announced by the Centre. “We have taken steps to reach out to the most backward and insurgency infested areas in the region…we are improving the rail, road and air network in the region,” he said, adding the growth of the region in the 11th plan period was 9.95 percent against the national average of eight percent. Talking about the challenges facing the region, he identified poor connectivity as the main difficulty and government has initiated steps to address the problem. Ghatowar said the UPA government undertook skill development training for the youths of the region to tackle the problem of unemployment and 75-80 percent of around 59,000 boys and girls who were trained, got jobs. At a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to review infrastructure situation in the region on Thursday, it was decided to expedite work on many hydro-projects which are held up due to various reasons and build strong transmission capacities on priority basis. The prime minister directed the Planning Commission to call a meeting of all the chief ministers of the northeastern states to improve inter-state coordination for speedy completion of the infrastructure projects. Ghatowar, however, ruled out any possibility of early election, saying government under Singh is “very firm and stable” and that he does not see any reason why early elections should be held. Elections will be held on time". PTI