Gogoi accepts responsibility for Congress debacle

Guwahati: Former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Wednesday accepted his responsibility for the Congress’ debacle in Assam Assembly polls and apologised to the people for not being able to fulfil their expectations.
“Yes, I am responsible for the poll debacle. I am the leader. If I am not responsible, then who will be?” Gogoi told a press conference when asked if he would take the responsibility for the poor performance of Congress.
Probably his government failed to fulfil the expectations of people and so they were defeated in the poll, he said. “We will analyse why we faced such a debacle. We must have committed some mistakes. We apologise to the people for that. We will now strengthen the party. We are working on how to reorganise the party. The challenge is to find out the mistakes and go to people,” Gogoi said.
Stating that the situation this time was similar to 1985 when AGP came to power, foreigners issue had played the main role then, “also like this election”. “AGP had benefited that time and now it is BJP. They (BJP) succeeded in dividing the people by doing publicity that existence of Assamese and Hindus are at stake… We took steps on infiltration issue. But the way RSS presented it, we could not guess it. Already reports have come out that over 25,000 RSS members worked during the polls,” Gogoi said.
He said the Congress workers are not disheartened as 31 per cent of people of Assam voted for Congress, while BJP alone got 29 per cent votes and BJP-led alliance got 41 per cent. “In 2011, we got 39 per cent votes. This time it decreased from that, but increased from what we got in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. We are thankful to the people for giving us chance to serve them for 15 years. We succeeded in many fronts and also failed at some,” Gogoi said. Stating that he does not have any plans to retire from active politics, Gogoi said Congress will now prepare itself for 2019 Lok Sabha elections. (PTI)