Nagaon (Assam), Sep 24 (PTI) Assam’s Congress MP Rakibul Hussain on Thursday alleged that the recent attack on the party’s convoy in Nagaon was “premeditated”.
“Despite alerting the SSP and district administration in advance about the likelihood of attack, police failed to take preventive measures and instead protected ruling party goons,” the MP claimed while addressing a press conference here amid campaigning for the Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election.
BJP and Congress workers clashed during campaigning for the Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election on Monday in the Samaguri assembly segment when a Congress procession, led by the party’s state president Gaurav Gogoi, was on its way to a public meeting at Larirmukh.
The window glass of two Congress vehicles was broken, and some journalists also sustained minor injuries in the stone-pelting.
Countering propaganda about his role in Parliament, Hussain said he had raised the highest number of written and oral questions among 543 MPs and brought Assam’s issues to the fore.
He said he had demanded a relief package of Rs 20 lakh each for families affected by floods and erosion in Sivasagar, Charaideo and Jorhat, highlighted the erosion crisis in Majuli and reiterated the demand to declare Assam’s flood and erosion problem as a national calamity.
“The BJP may try to exploit communal fault lines, but people have seen through their designs and will give a fitting reply in the by-election,” he said.
The by-election in Assam’s Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency will be held on October 6, and the vote counting will take place on October 9.
A bypoll in Nagaon has been necessitated after former Congress leader Pradyut Bordoloi resigned from the party just days before the Assam assembly election to join the BJP. He won from the Dispur assembly constituency to become an MLA.
Hussain also claimed that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has raked up ‘Miya’ politics to divert attention from the government’s failures and people’s anger over floods in Upper Assam.
“At times he claims minorities are leaving Congress to join BJP, at other times he warns them against voting for him, and then stages drama seeking their votes using government welfare schemes,” he alleged.
Hussain claimed artificial floods and natural disasters had devastated lives across Sivasagar, Charaideo and Jorhat districts, and widespread resentment against the BJP government was prevailing in Upper Assam over the administration’s failure.
“Exactly at this juncture, the chief minister has deliberately raked up the Miya issue to spread poison of division to divert attention from the simmering anger in Upper Assam,” he alleged.
‘Miya’ is originally a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, and the non-Bengali-speaking people generally identify them as Bangladeshi immigrants. In recent years, activists from the community have started adopting the term as a gesture of defiance.
Hussain also condemned alleged harassment of rickshaw pullers and daily wage earners and police actions in the name of encounters. PTI TR NN
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