Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi has said if the Congress-led alliance comes to power in Assam, it will not allow the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and make the state government party to the ongoing case in the Supreme Court to oppose the controversial law.
He alleged that the CAA was the BJP’s “political tool” to divide society for votes.
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Gogoi, who is the Congress’s deputy leader in Lok Sabha, said both the identity and the development of Assam are at stake in the upcoming Assam Assembly elections.
He said the “winds of hope” in anticipation of a ‘Mahajot’ (grand alliance) government were blowing in the state.
Asked if he would be willing to take on the mantle of chief ministership if the Congress-led ‘Mahajot’ comes to power, Gogoi said he has never been after any post and hopes to serve the party in whatever role it deems fit for him.
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Gogoi said his father Tarun Gogoi, a three-time Assam chief minister, has left a vacuum and nobody can fill his shoes.
“He was the one who proposed in a Congress core committee meeting last year in August that the Congress should enter into an alliance with the AIUDF and other like-minded parties in the 2021 elections. The concept of the ‘Mahajot’ is not recent and it was pushed by him,” he told a news agency.
Assam has a unique perspective on the CAA given its history of the Assam Accord and given how sensitive the issue of peace and harmony between different diverse communities is, he said.
“CAA has done nothing but upset the delicate balance and offered no concrete solution to the real issues. So, it is nothing but (the BJP’s) political tool to divide society for votes,” Gogoi said.
Gogoi also said that all state leaders were running one of the most united Congress campaigns ever seen.
Asserting that both the identity and the development of Assam are at stake in the upcoming polls, Gogoi said the CAA, prior to COVID-19, was a huge issue in Assam and people going to vote are now thinking about the future of our language and culture.
Gogoi added that people are really looking forward to the five guarantees that the Congress is offering — nullifying CAA, providing five lakh government jobs, raising the daily wage of tea plantation workers to Rs 365, free electricity up to 200 units per household and Rs 2,000 as monthly income support to all homemakers.