The Congress Legislature Party leader in Assam, Debabrata Saikia, Friday filed petitions seeking the disqualification of two party MLAs – including its former state working president – from the assembly for declaring their support to the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP government earlier this month. This comes after the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee issued show-cause notices to both the leaders – North Karimganj MLA and former APCC working president Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha and Mangaldoi MLA Basanta Das. On February14, in the middle of the ongoing assembly session, both the MLAs announced their decision to “support” the state’s BJP government’s “developmental work”, following which they met Sarma and felicitated him. The same day, Purkayastha also resigned from his position as APCC working president. However, both declared that they would continue to remain members of the Congress and continue as party MLAs. While this had complicated matters for the party, on Friday, Saikai filed two disqualification petitions before Assembly Speaker Biswajit Daimary “for voluntarily giving up membership of the Indian National Congress.” Technically, the party currently has 27 MLAs in the 126-member assembly, but disqualification proceedings against three others – Sashi Kanta Das, Siddique Ahmed and Sherman Ali Ahmed – initiated by the Congress legislature party because of “anti-party activities” are already pending with the Speaker. On the day that they had announced their support to the BJP government, Assam Congress general secretary Bipul Gogoi had issued show-cause notices to both, asking them to explain why the party should not take action against them. In his show-cause notice to Purkayastha, Gogoi had pointed out that he had been vocal about corruption in the Assam government. “It was observed… that you raised your voice against the BJP government’s rampant corruption, land scams, case for jobs. At a time when you openly expressed support to the BJP government, President APCC wants to know whether you will support the above cited corruption. Your statements have tarnished the image of the Congress party,” stated the notice. Purkayastha, in particular, had been a vocal critic of the BJP government and had engaged in a war of words with Sarma in the assembly just two days before his surprise announcement.
