Gogoi welcomes BJP’s young gun Tasa to battefield Titabor
Guwahati: “This election is our (Congress’) fight against the injustice done to Assam and the Northeast region as a whole by the BJP government in the Centre led by Narendra Modi,” Assam chief minister and Congress veteran Tarun Gogoi on Friday said.
Dismissing the BJP-AGP alliance as ‘no threat at all’, Gogoi said, “We are not fighting the polls against Assam state BJP headed by Sarbananda Sonowal who has been nothing but a helpless minister in Modi’s government that has robbed backward Assam of its special category state status and suspended the Northeast Industrial Investment Promotion Policy (NEIPP). We are going to the people this polls armed with series of injustice has been done to Assam by Modi government so far.”
Gogoi commented that Modi wave was no longer at work in the country as it failed to bring about the promised `aache din’ for the people of the country. “Before the last Lok Sabha polls Modi promised to drive out illegal Bangladeshi migrants from Assam, not to part Assam’s land with Bangladesh and stop construction of mega Lower Subansiri Dam. Almost two years down the line, has Modi government in the Centre sent back a single illegal migrants from Bangladesh while it has land boundary agreement with Bangladesh reneging on the promise made to people of Assam. The Centre is now trying its best to resume the stalled construction as Lower Subansiri Dam,” he said.
Gogoi termed the BJP-AGP alliance based on hunger for power of both the parties and sans any common minimum programme for governance and said that this alliance would fail to have any impact on Congress’ poll prospects in Assam. Raking up the forgettable episode of extrajudicial killings (`secret killings’) of ULFA kin in the state during 1996-2001, Gogoi said “Both the AGP and the BJP are guilty of making Assam bleed by engineering secret killings of so many innocent youth in the name of fighting insurgency.
Just (Retd) K N Saikia Commission in its report on secret killings mentioned about possible involvement of the State in such killings. At that time AGP was in power in Assam and the BJP-led NDA was at the Centre. Such killings of innocent youth would not have been possible sans support of the both government at the state and the Centre. Congress had promised to put an end to that gory episode of killings and kept the promise after it came back to power in the state 2001.”
Gogoi dared the AGP and BJP to challenge Justice (Retd) K N Saikia commission report in the court if their incumbent govt at that time were not involved in the killings of innocent kin of insurgents in the state. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Friday hailed opponent BJP’s decision to field the party’s popular young MP from the tea tribe community, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa against him in Titabor Assembly constituency and said he would be happy if his opponent of his son’s age could defeat him in polls.
“Tasa is like my son and I will be happy if I get defeated in the polls by him. People of Titabor which I have been representing since 2001, will definitely vote for me if I have done nothing for them,” Gogoi said. BJP has fielded its incumbent popular MP from Jorhat Lok Sabha constituency, Tasa in his early-40s, against octogenarian Tarun Gogoi so that the Congress veteran could be kept confined to his constituency during the polls. Tasa being a person from the tea tribe community, the BJP wants to woo about 40,000 tea tribe voters in Titabor LAC by fielding Tasa there.
However, Gogoi apparently sounds hardly bothered by the challenge thrown by BJP by fielding Tasa against him.
Tasa on the other hand has expressed gartitde to the party top leaders for entrusting his with the heavy responsibility of fighting the Congress heavyweight Tarun Gogoi in the election. “I am humbled by the confidence shown by the party leaders in me and I will try my best to live up to their expectations and accomplish the task assigned to me,”Tasa said.
The BJP has also fielded, Union Minister for Sports and Youth Welfare Sarbananda Sonowal from river island constituency of Majuli, the cultural capital of Assam. Majuli is in Jorhat district, the home district of Tarun Gogoi.
Gogoi said people of Majuli had now been provded with an opportunity to ask Sarbanada Sonowal as to what he and his government in the Centre had so far done for Majuli river isle to provide them respite from perennial flood and erosion problem.