‘An austere lifestyle has to begin with the CM’
Prem Singh Tamang (Golay), the new chief minister of Sikkim, has just won the Poklok Kamrang seat in a bypoll, after the Election Commission waived his disqualification from contesting elections, paving the way for his entry into the 32-member state assembly. This EC disqualification had come after Tamang was convicted in a graft case last year. In an interview with Romita Datta, Tamang promises to lay out a roadmap for a ‘Naya Sikkim’. Excerpts:
Q. You have refused an official bungalow and you travel in a Scorpio without a convoy...unlike the chief ministers of the past. Is it a conscious effort to fulfil your election promises?
The previous government has left us with debt burden of Rs 16,000 crore owing to financial irregularities, wasteful expenditure and bad loans. What I have promised to the people of Sikkim has come from my long experience of being in power as well as out of it, as leader of the Opposition. I have seen how VVIPs have squandered money on lavish lifestyles. Cars worth not less than Rs 30 lakh made up the fleet of the CM, his cabinet ministers and even the bureaucrats. I have decided to auction 40 such vehicles and spend the money on social welfare programmes. As for the palatial CM residence, I’ll soon turn it into a museum and tourist spot.
Q. What are the other measures you are planning to introduce? No extravagant expenditure on hotels for holding government programmes or expensive medical treatment for ministers and bureaucrats in private hospitals and nursing homes unless they need special attention. No excise quota on liquor for ministers and we’ll totally do away with the 7 per cent tax people had to pay as party funds to get work done. The administration will automatically be corruption-free if the CM’s post
is corruption-free. A humble lifestyle has to begin with the chief minister and the rest will fall into place.
Q. Besides this austerity drive, what other cost-cutting measures have you planned? We are exploring new revenue-earning means. For instance, we will earmark a high-value tourism corridor like Bhutan. We will provide international facilities at other tourist spots and charge higher fees. We will charge money for value and not just money for money’s sake. We will restructure the motor vehicles registration tax and excise tax. We can also tap the health sector, which has immense potential.
Q. Critics allege you are allowing the BJP to make inroads into Sikkim in exchange for them getting the Election Commission to lift the ban on your contesting.
Bogus. The EC has granted me the waiver on the merit of my appeal. The graft case was fabricated. I was accused of misappropriation of funds worth Rs 9.5 lakh when I was animal husbandry minister in the Pawan Chamling government in 1996-97. Had I been corrupt, why would he give me a party ticket in consecutive elections and make me minister? He framed me when I quit and formed my own party in 2013.
Q. There is talk of various scams in the previous government. What is your take? There were scams worth Rs 10,000 crore in the distribution of contracts for hydel power projects. The Teesta-Urja project, with a proposed cost of Rs 5,000 crore, had a cost overrun of nearly Rs 9,000 crore. How? Public money has been misused. The CBI will be engaged in the probe since it involved people at the top position.
Q. Sikkim is land-locked. Operations at the Pakyong airport have been shut down. The state was cut off during the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha’s strike in 2017. How are you planning to end Sikkim’s isolation through roads and railway links?
I am asking the Centre for a 200 km highway between Kalimpong and Siliguri via the Dooars. We are also trying to open the Seboke-Rangpo railway corridor sanctioned by Mamata Banerjee when she was Union minister for railways. ■