Knives out in Assam opposition, Congress ally says party lacked plan, Rahul and Priyanka were missing
Raijor Dal’s Akhil Gogoi says opposition lacked strategy to counter BJP juggernaut said their campaign was “haphazard” and “half-hearted”
Raijor Dal chief Akhil Gogoi Days after the debacle in the Assam elections, cracks have begun to emerge in the opposition alliance, with the Raijor Dal’s Akhil Gogoi saying that the opposition led by the Congress lacked a strategy to counter the BJP juggernaut and accused its ally of a “haphazard” and “half-hearted” campaign.
Akhil Gogoi is one of only 21 candidates of the opposition alliance who won the recently concluded polls. His Raijor Dal won in two of the 13 seats in which it fielded candidates; the Congress won in 19 of the 100 seats in which it fielded candidates, and the other allies – regional parties Assam Jatiya Parishad, All Party Hill Leaders Conference, and the CPI(M) – pulled a blank. The NDA won 102 of 126 seats in the state assembly.
After years of an on-again-off-again relationship, the Congress and the Raijor Dal had finalised the alliance just 20 days before the polls.
Akhil Gogoi, who has been re-elected from the Sibsagar seat, made a detailed statement about what he thinks are the reasons for this outcome. “The BJP had a very good plan and at our end, there was a last-minute, unplanned, haphazard and half-hearted campaigne. That’s the main reason. There might be some other technical reasons, too, there be issues with EVMs, but I think the BJP undertook five-six strategies to win this election, and we were unable to come up with a strategy because most of the time went by in holding meetings to finalise the alliance. It was dragging on and on,” he said.
Around two weeks before the alliance was finalised, he had announced that the talks had “collapsed” over seat-sharing disagreements, claiming that his party had initially sought 27 seats and later agreed to settle for 13, but that the Congress had refused to yield one particular seat – Dhing. His party ultimately contested from Dhing as part of the seat-sharing arrangement, and won.
Akhil Gogoi said that the BJP had been working on a multi-pronged strategy over the years. “The BJP’s biggest strategy was delimitation, and the Special Revision of voter lists. After delimitation, they reduced the number of Muslim seats and made it 22. Rest were made Hindu seats and for five years, they kept doing Hindu-Muslim… They did evictions, shouted about Bangladeshis, did Hindu-Muslim, shouted ‘miya miya’, ‘Pakistan Pakistan’ and said that evictions are the final solution to save the Assamese people. We did not have any counter strategy to resist this,” he said.
He said the other “strategies” included “development politics,” beneficiary schemes, “ultranationalism” and co-opting the media.
Taking aim at the Congress members of the outgoing assembly, including then Leader of the Opposition in Debabrata Saikia, who lost from the Nazira constituency, which neighbours Sibsagar, he said, “What was the opposition’s strategy to counter this? There was no strategy. The strategy was to sit with mouths shut in the assembly. I was speaking in the assembly, so in Sibsagar, the biggest issue was ‘we need someone who will raise his voice in the assembly’. Debabrata Saikia was sitting with his mouth shut in the assembly. He was the LOP. They had 29 people. I was one person.”
He said that senior Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, did not spend enough time campaigning in Assam, that the alliance partners did not campaign together, and that the “result was evident” when two senior Congress leaders, Pradyot Bordoloi and Bhupen Borah, left the party just before the election.
Stating that central BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah made it a point to visit the state multiple times, he said, “How many times did Congress leaders come? Rahul Gandhi came for two days. Similarly, Priyanka Gandhi came for two days.”
With Gogoi not holding back in his criticism of the Congress, Debabrata Saikia hit back at him on Thursday, claiming that he had won in Sibasagar by “standing on the back of the Congress”.
“I would have called him courageous if he had said the things he is saying now earlier. He won in Sibsagar by standing on the back of the Congress. Just a few days back, we had the panchayat elections, and we didn’t have an alliance there. They gave candidates there; how many of them won? Now he’s claiming that he’s the only person who worked, and that only he has a base because of that,” said Saikia.
Assam Mahila Congress president Mira Borthakur Goswami, who lost to Pradyot Bordoloi in the Dispur seat, also hit out at Akhil. “Akhil Gogoi, have you broken the alliance by yourself? If Congress had fielded a candidate in Sibsagar, even EVM would not have been able to save you,” she said.
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