Congress will break its alliance with AIUDF if Ajmal's party exhibit communal attitude, says campaign committee chairman

Keeping in mind the upcoming Assembly elections, with an aim to stop BJP, Congress is forming an alliance with AIUDF, which bears a communal image, and with some left-aligned parties and various regional parties with the secular tag in the state. However, to keep the secular image of the party and the alliance intact, Congress will not hesitate to sever ties with the AIUDF at any time said Pradyut Bordoloi, Chairman of the Assam Pradesh Congress campaign committee and MP from Nagaon. The Congress leader has come to Dholai on Thursday to join other leaders of the party at the mass rally. He was accompanied by Sushmita Dev, former MP from Silchar and President of the All India Mahila Congress (AIMC), Naba Talukder, General Secretary of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (AICC), and other leaders of the District Congress.

At the press conference, the leaders presented the record of various failures of the BJP government and discussed their strategy for the upcoming elections. They repeatedly talked about communal versus secular ideology. AIUDF, an ally of their alliance, has at various times publicly clarified its religious position, with many calling the party communal. How much safe is the secularism of the alliance? In response to this question, Pradyut Bordoloi said, “First of all, if a party, organization or an individual works for the betterment of its own religious community, it cannot be called communal. If anyone spreads unrest in the society in the name of religion, then it is communalism. Secondly, just because we have decided to contest the elections in alliance with the AIUDF, doesn’t mean that we will keep our eyes and ears closed. If there is any instance of AIUDF spreading the poison of communal politics, we will break ties with them.” On the issue of alliance and seat-sharing, Ripun Bora, President of AICC, said on Thursday, “The enemy of our enemy is our friend. So the AIUDF, CPI, CPI(ML), CPM, Regional People’s Front, etc. have sided with the anti-BJP alliance. The only goal of each of us is to remove BJP from the power of Dispur in the next elections. We have 5 to 6 qualified faces in each of the 128 seats in the state. Hence, we will publish the list after discussion. Congress is a high command-based party, we will announce the list of candidates after adequate discussions. Talks are not over yet with those with whom the grand alliance has been formed. We are getting a lot of qualified candidates and the election results will be completely new this time. ”

The press conference on Friday discussed the implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord and BJP’s plan to use it to make the Bengali community second-class citizens in the state. Pradyut Bordoloi said, “The agreement was made keeping in view the interests of every community in the state, which in turn calmed our state’s tension. AASU wanted the base year for citizenship to be 1951 but Indira Gandhi wanted the base year to be 1967. One of the strongest proponents of Indira Gandhi’s decision was former Union Minister late Santosh Mohan Dev. Finally, keeping 21st March 1971 as the foundation, the Assam Accord was made and everyone agreed to it. At first, the BJP government broke the basic foundation of the Assam Accord by again demanding 1951 as the foundation year. But at the same time, is using Clause 6 to intimidate the Bengali community of the state. We intend to make it clear to the people about BJP’s duplicity.”

Addressing Silchar MP Rajdeep Roy, Pradyut said, “You are doing a lot of publicity about the Multimodel Logistics Park in Silchar these days. When we were in government, we started the work of connecting Barak Valley directly with Kolkata by water through the ‘Kaladan Multi-Model Transit Transport Project’. Even though the project has progressed a lot, we are now almost at halt due to our absence in the government. If they want the best for the people of Barak Valley, then they should go beyond politics and take the initiative to make such a good project a reality.”

At the press conference on the same day, singing in the tone of Pradyut Bordoloi, Sushmita Dev blamed the BJP government on multiple fronts. She claimed that the BJP is trying to spread confusion in the state over misinterpretation of the agreement. “As a result of fulfilling the promises made to the people in the last five years, they want to move the battle in the opposite direction now.”