Floods in Assam, need govt’s full attention, Cong asks Shiv Sena MLA Eknath Shinde to leave
Politics

Floods in Assam, need govt’s full attention, Cong asks Shiv Sena MLA Eknath Shinde to leave

Congress state chief writes to Shinde, says the ‘royal hospitality’ provided to him and his MLAs at the time of floods was ‘unfair and unacceptable’.

   

File photo of Maharashtra Shiv Sena MLA Dadaji Bhuse, MLA Sanjay Rathod and MLC Ravindra Phatak with Eknath Shinde at Radisson Blu hotel in Guwahati | ANI

New Delhi: Shiv Sena MLAs camping in Guwahati and the attendant media frenzy has not gone down well with the Assamese people and was creating an unhealthy atmosphere, state Congress Bhupen Kumar Borah told Maharashtra minister and rebel chief Eknath Shinde Friday.

Borah has written to Shinde asking him to leave Assam at the earliest in the “greater interest of the state”.

Slamming BJP Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma as a “wheeler-dealer encouraging political horse-trading”, Borah said Sarma and the government machinery “should be busy with the management of the flood crisis”. “But your presence here has been standing as a hindrance,” Borah wrote.

Borah reminded Shinde that Assam was facing a “devastating flood situation and the flood-affected people were suffering severely” in absence of adequate relief.

He mentioned government data which said 105 people have died since 6 April – out of which 65 since 14 June – and 55 lakh people in 32 districts of the state’s 35 were adversely affected.

“In such a critical and deplorable situation of the state, your presence in Guwahati and the busy activities of the Assam government in providing royal hospitality to you is quite unfair and unacceptable,” Borah wrote.

Saying that Assam was a “land where people give a lot of respect to ethics and values,” the Congress chief decried Shinde’s presence in a hotel for “alleged horse-trading to topple the elected government of Mahrashtra”.

Eknath Sinde, along with over 40 party Shiv Sena and Independents MLAs, have put up in the BJP-ruled state’s capital since Wednesday morning.

He has accused Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray of having stepped away from his father and party founder Bal Thackeray’s values.

It is alleged the rebel camp is unhappy with the coalition with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, which along with the Shiv Sena form the ruling Maha Vikas Agadhi in Maharashtra.

On Wednesday night, Uddhav Thackeray vacated the official chief minister’s residence in Mumbai, hours after an emotional appeal to the rebels, exhorting them to speak with him directly.

Thackeray said his resignation was ready and that he would put in his papers if even one MLA or party worker wanted him to.


Also read: ‘Aloof, distant, distrustful’ — why Uddhav Thackeray couldn’t hold Sena MLAs together