Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh called the Conrad K Sangma-led NPP, the UDP and the TMC “puppets” of the BJP in poll-bound Meghalaya.

Claiming that the Meghalaya polls will be a "watershed election" for the Congress, Ramesh said 47 of its 60 candidates are "below the age of 45 and this has never happened before in any state".

Such a decision helped bring youth to the fore, he said.

The Congress leader, who was here on Saturday to release the party's manifesto for the February 27 assembly elections, said Meghalaya means abode of clouds, but "the clouds are not rain-bearing ones but of corruption, unemployment and power cuts".

“The Congress is fighting against the cloud of corruption and unemployment, and the destruction of Meghalaya's identity and the cloud of the unholy alliance – BJP, NPP, UDP, TMC – that are all claiming they are fighting the election independently…" the former union minister said.

The Congress leader also asserted that "there are puppets of the BJP in different states".

"Here (in Meghalaya) there is one puppet called the NPP, there is another puppet called the UDP and now there is a new one, a third puppet that has come into the Meghalaya politics, TMC or JMP (Judas Mukul Party)," he said.

Former chief minister Mukul Sangma, ex-speaker Charles Pyngrope and 10 other Congress legislators had in 2021 switched their allegiance to the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC.

"These are all part of the BJP's game plan. The NPP is the BJP's A-team, the UDP is the B-team and the TMC is C-team here," Ramesh alleged.

Noting that allies of the ruling Meghalaya Democratic Alliance are independently contesting the upcoming assembly elections, he claimed that "the NPP, the UDP and the BJP are all part and parcel of the same package".? ? ? ??

Terming the former Congress leaders who are now with other parties, as "Judas", Ramesh said, “One advantage of such desertion is that they create vacancies and we have so many youngsters for the first time. Ten out of the 60 nominees are women. No other political party in Meghalaya has given women such a representation,” he said.? ? ? ??

Stating that their desertion was “good riddance”, Ramesh said their commitment to the values of the Congress and its ideology was "not very strong".? ? ??

The Congress suffered a major loss in recent years as none of its 17 MLAs who were elected in 2018 is with the party. While 12 of them joined the Trinamool Congress in 2021, the remaining five are contesting on NPP and UDP tickets.