The Congress on Sunday suspended three Jharkhand MLAs, who were caught allegedly with a huge amount of cash in Howrah, and accused the BJP of attempting to topple its coalition government in the state.
However, the Congress asserted that its coalition government led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) is \u201ccompletely secure and stable\u2019\u2019 and would complete its term.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, party\u2019s general secretary and Jharkhand in-charge Avinash Pande said Congress president Sonia Gandhi has suspended the three MLAs with immediate effect.
Acting on a tip-off, police on Saturday intercepted an SUV in which Congress MLAs Irfan Ansari, Rajesh Kachchap and Naman Bixal Kongari were travelling on national highway-16 at Ranihati in West Bengal\u2019s Howrah and allegedly found a huge amount of cash in the vehicle.
Pande said the three MLAs were allegedly involved in a plot to weaken the legislative party in Jharkhand and also in \u201cmisleading\u201d other MLAs
\u201cThe party leadership is aware of who all are part of the conspiracy and will take action at an appropriate time,\u201d he said.
\u201cWe have information on everyone. In the coming days, be it any public representative, party\u2019s office bearer, or any worker, whoever is found connected or involved in this, the party will take strict action against them,\u201d said Pande.
He asserted that the JMM-led government is completely \u201csecure and stable\u201d and the coalition MLAs, \u201cbarring a few black sheep\u201d, will fight such attempts in a united manner and complete the term.
Accusing the BJP of attempting to topple the Jharkhand government, Pande said democracy is being \u201cshredded to pieces\u201d as democratically elected governments are being destabilised in a brazen manner.
\u201cEfforts being made from the last two years to destabilise the government in Jharkhand and from time to time legislators are contacted, threatened and enticed,\u201d he alleged.
An FIR was also registered in the connection some days ago against BJP leaders, Pande said.
\u201cIn these efforts, a chief minister of a state is involved and is contacting MLAs directly and Union ministers are threatening MLAs,\u201d Pande claimed without naming anyone.
Pande said the Enforcement Directorate had been misused to effect a change of government in Maharashtra.
Congress\u2019 media department head Pawan Khera alleged that the government agencies, instead of doing their job, were working as an extended arm of the BJP to destabilise elected governments.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Twitter on Saturday that \u201cThe BJP\u2019s \u2018Operation Lotus\u2019 in Jharkhand stands exposed tonight in Howrah. The game plan of \u2018Hum Do\u2019 in Delhi is to do in Jharkhand what they did in Maharashtra by installing E-D duo.\u201d
The Jharkhand Congress has also claimed that the huge amount of cash was part of a conspiracy by the BJP to topple the Hemant Soren government, of which it is a part along with Lalu Prasad Yadav\u2019s Rashtriya Janata Dal.
Besides the MLAs, there were two other people in the SUV, which carried a board mentioning \u201cMLA Jamtara Jharkhand\u201d along with the Congress\u2019 election symbol, police said.
Ansari is the MLA of Jamtara, while Kachchap is the legislator of Khijri in Ranchi district and Kongari is the MLA of Kolebira in Simdega district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Congress on Sunday suspended three Jharkhand MLAs, who were caught allegedly with a huge amount of cash in Howrah, and accused the BJP of attempting to topple its coalition government in the state.However, the Congress asserted that its coalition government led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) is \u201ccompletely secure and stable\u2019\u2019 and would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":284898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}