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Himanta attacks Gaurav Gogoi: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday (February 13) raised questions about a meeting Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi held 10 years ago with the then Pakistan High Commissioner to India, and linked it to his wife Elizabeth Gogoi.
In a long post on X, Sarma said, “In 2015, the Pakistani High Commissioner to India, Mr. Abdul Basit, invited a first-term Member of Parliament (MP) and his startup, Policy for Youth, to discuss India-Pakistan relations…Soon after, his startup published an article in The Hindu criticizing the Border Security Force’s handling of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. A closer examination of his parliamentary questions revealed a growing focus on sensitive defense matters…Interestingly, these developments occurred immediately after his marriage to a British citizen with a professional background that raises further questions.”
Continuing to target Elizabeth, Sarma said she had in the past “spent time in Pakistan, employed by an organization widely believed to be a front for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).”
Sarma and other BJP leaders have recently launched an offensive against Gogoi, raising questions about his wife’s foreign citizenship and her having worked in Pakistan in the past. Gogoi has dismissed the allegations.
Who is Elizabeth Gogoi, and what is the organisation Sarma is talking about? What is the bitter history of feuding between Gogoi and Sarma? We explain.
Elizabeth Gogoi was born Elizabeth Colebourn in the United Kingdom. She holds a Masters in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE), and married Gaurav Gogoi in 2013. In the past, she has worked for Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), which is what the BJP is targetting her for.
Her author profile on the CDKN website, where her last article is from 2014, says she coordinated CDKN’s programme in India and Nepal.
“Elizabeth joined CDKN in March 2011 with a background in climate change and development policy-making and research. This included working in the European Parliament on the negotiations of the 2009 EU Climate Change Package, and as a researcher in the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) looking at EU development cooperation. She also has experience working in the US Senate, UN Secretariat and for NGOs in Tanzania and South Africa,” the website says.
The Climate and Development Knowledge Network works to “improve the well-being of the most climate-affected people in the global South, especially marginalised groups, through transformative climate-resilient action,” its website says.
It was founded in 2010, and is active in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The programme is managed by the organisations SouthSouthNorth, and implemented in partnership with Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano and ICLEI South Asia.
“Our current five year phase (2022-2027) is focusing on accelerating equitable, financed and ecosystem-based action on climate change that is locally-led and strengthens the voice and climate leadership of disadvantaged groups at community level,” the CDKN website says. This phase is “co-funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) through the Step Change Initiative, a Canada-Netherlands partnership to drive equitable and inclusive locally-led adaptation.”
Back in 2023, Gaurav Gogoi had alleged that CM Sarma used his influence to secure approval for a Rs 10 crore grant under a Central government scheme for a media company run by his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma. Riniki had then filed a Rs 10-crore defamation case against Gogoi.
But the bad blood between Gogoi and Sarma has deeper roots. Himanta Biswa Sarma was earlier in the Congress, where he was among the close lieutenants of former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, Gaurav Gogoi’s father.
As it became clear that Gaurav was being groomed as his father’s political successor, Sarma and Tarun had a falling out. Sarma eventually resigned from the Congress in 2015, and in his resignation letter to then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, wrote, “Entire party dispensation in Assam is obsessed with one agenda, i.e how to give party nomination to their son and daughter. However, for people like me who have no blue blood but a passion for a developed nation and a resurgent Assam, it’s time to move on.”
