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‘Question of self-respect’: Former Assam Congress chief Bhupen Borah quits party ahead of polls
The Congress leadership will make every effort to convince Borah to withdraw his resignation, party sources in Delhi said
Bhupen Borah is a two-time MLA from 2006 to 2016 from the Bihpuria constituency and was appointed the president of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee in 2021. (file)
Just days after he was tasked with taking forward alliance talks for the upcoming Assembly elections in Assam, former state Congress president Bhupen Borah on Monday resigned from the party. However, the party’s central leadership is making efforts to convince him to reconsider his decision.
Borah, who was the president of the state Congress unit till Gaurav Gogoi took charge in June last year, said he submitted his resignation to the party’s central leadership at around 8 am on Monday.
“There is a question of self-respect and I have also informed the central leadership of my concerns about the way in which the party is being conducted… When our car went to Majuli, if the party can’t take a decision on who should go, who shouldn’t go, what is the future of the party if it is that way. I have informed this to the central leadership,” said Borah, referring to a Congress rally in Majuli last Friday led by Gaurav Gogoi, in which he was accompanied by Borah, Leader of the Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly Debabrata Saikia and MP Rakibul Hussain.
Meanwhile, Congress sources in Delhi said that the Congress leadership has not accepted the resignation and will make “all possible efforts” to convince Bhupen Borah to withdraw the resignation. Senior Congress leader Jitendra Singh, who is the AICC in charge for Assam, was in a meeting along with Bhupen Borah and Gaurav Gogoi.
A source said, “Our AICC representative (Jitendra Singh) will have a conversation with both leaders to try to iron out any issues.”
“We will make all possible efforts to convince him to not leave the Congress family. In politics, resignations are withdrawn after conversations,” said a senior Congress leader in Delhi.
Bhupen Borah is a two-time MLA from 2006 to 2016 from the Bihpuria constituency and was appointed the president of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee in 2021, after the party’s loss in the state election that year. The 55-year-old has been with the Congress since 1994.
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During the roughly four years that he had been at the helm of the party, as the party continued to suffer losses and erosion in Assam with leaders and workers leaving the party, one of Borah’s core aims was to stitch together a regional anti-BJP alliance along with parties such as the Raijor Dol, Asom Jatiyo Parishad, the CPI, CPI(M) and All Party Hill Leaders Conference, something that he took initiative towards and has been working on since Early 2023.
However, apart from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when these parties allied together successfully, these attempts have been rocky with seat-sharing arrangements falling through for by-elections and the other parties alleging that Congress central leadership had been unwilling to accommodate them in seat-sharing. This continues to be a contested matter in the run-up to the Assembly election.
Despite Gogoi being at the helm of party affairs, Borah, who shares a good relationship with the potential alliance partners who he has been in talks with over the past few years, was last week tasked with playing a larger role in taking the alliance talks forward, with elections expected to be announced in the next few weeks. However, he submitted his resignation within days after this, and has suggested dissatisfaction with being given a limited hand in taking forward these talks.
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