Saffron party makes rhino poaching a political plank against ruling Cong in Assam
GUWAHATI: Saving the pride of Assam, the endangered one-horned Indian rhinoceros in its main hub in Kaziranga National Park (KNP) as well as purging the Park’s fringe areas of suspected illegal Bangladeshi settlers are in the core of the BJP’s newly drawn up action plan with a target to capture at least 84 Assembly seats in Assam in the 2016 Assembly election in the state.
Enthused by victory in seven of the state’s 14 Lok Sabha seats in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections, the state BJP president and the Union Minister of State (Independent) for Youth Welfare Sarbananda Sonowal called upon the party workers to pull up their socks to sustain the level of hard work they had done in just concluded polls till 2016 Assembly election.
Chairing the extended office-bearers meeting of the state BJP in Kaziranga, Sonowal said the party wanted to launch its mission aimed at winning 84 assembly seats from the rhino hub to send out the message that it was very serious about protecting the pachyderm which is pride of Assam and was under severe threat from poachers now having a field day in Kaziranga National Park because of inefficient wildlife protection mechanism under the Congress regime in the state.
At least 18 rhinos have been killed in Kaziranga National Park so far this year in addition to 40 odd killed during last year prompting people’s organisations of all hues to bay for the head of the state forest minister Rakibul Hussain. The BJP has taken strong exception to repeated failure of Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government to save the rhino in the wild from the poachers.
Sonowal said, “Kaziranga is the pride of Assam. The sentiments of the people across the state are hurt because of increasing number of rhino-deaths due to unabated poaching. Moreover, encroachment of Kaziranga by suspected Bangladeshi infiltrators has also made the people angry. We are sending our first signals out for the 2016 assembly elections from here.”
“We are placing this (rhino-poaching and encroachment of Kaziranga) issue before the union home minister and environment minister for taking initiative at the central level because the Congress-led government in Assam has miserably failed to protect the national park and its animals,” Sonowal said.