AGP parts ways with BJP

Guwahati, Sept. 20: The AGP formally put an end to its year-long honeymoon with the BJP today.

The regional party took the decision to snap ties with the BJP at its general council meeting held here today.

AGP vice-president Apurba Bhattacharjee said the general council of the party had decided not to go with the BJP in next year’s Assembly elections in the state.

The AGP had pre-poll understanding with the BJP in the parliamentary elections last year. Though the AGP fared poorly, the BJP managed to up its tally at the expense of the regional party.

Bhattacharjee said the AGP would try to forge tie-ups with other regional parties to prevent the Congress from coming to power in 2011.

He said the six-member election committee of the party headed by its president Chandra Mohan Patowary would chalk out a strategy in this regard.

The AGP also hinted that the Rs 1,000-crore scam in Dima Hasao (formerly NC Hills) district would be its major poll plank in the forthcoming Assembly elections.

Addressing the general council meeting, Patowary said because of rampant corruption and misrule by the Congress-led coalition government of the state, the people desperately wanted a change in government.

“The manner in which government funds were siphoned off in Dima Hasao district and the seizure of around Rs 13 crore in cash stacked in sacks and boxes from the house of a relative of a scam-accused government official by the CBI have raised the eyebrows of the people in the state.”

“Not only in Dima Hasao district, public money is being plundered in every government department in the state,” Patowary claimed.

Asserting that the people of Assam wish for a political change, Patowary egged on party workers to work at the grassroots to strengthen the AGP’s organisational base to help the regional party return to power next year.

The AGP chief said the Congress-led government in the state had remained a mute spectator to encroachment of the state’s land by neighbouring states like Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.

“The present government has failed on all fronts. Things have gone from bad to worse be it price rise, unemployment, flood or erosion problem,” he said.

Patowary also criticised the government for not being able to halt the construction of the mega dam by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation at Gerukamukh in Dhemaji along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border.

He said the project would affect ecology, aquatic life and people in the downstream areas.

                                            

                                                                                                                                                                              Ttelegraph