BPF may review support to the Tarun Gogoi government
Guwahati: The exclusion of certain aspirants from Assam in the Manmohan Singh Ministry has created political unease.
The Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), a coalition partner of the Congress in the State, is reviewing its support to the Tarun Gogoi government in protest against the non-inclusion of its lone MP, Sansuma Khunggur Bwiswmuthiary.
BPF chief Hagrma Mahilary and Mr. Bwiswmuthiary expressed resentment that despite their party being a pre-poll ally of the United Progressive Alliance, it was denied a berth. The BPF central committee is set to meet on June 4 to decide on the issue.
In the 126-member Assam Assembly the Congress has 54 legislators. The BPF has 11 members, three of whom are in the Gogoi Cabinet. The effective House strength is down to 125 following the resignation of Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) chief Badruddin Ajmal.
The legislator from the South Salmara Assembly constituency quit after being elected to the Lok Sabha from Dhubri constituency. Thus the AUDF’s strength stands at nine.
The Congress now has 54 members, the BPF has 11, the Asom Gana Parishad has 25, the Bharatiya Janata Party has 10, the AUDF has nine and the CPI(M) has two.
The CPI, the Autonomous State Demand Committee and the Nationalist Congress Party have one each. There are also 11 independents.
Resentment has also surfaced among Congress leaders and workers as only one of its seven MPs — Bijoy Krishna Handique — has found a berth, while both the MPs from Meghalaya — one from the Congress, Vincent H. Pala, and the other from the NCP, Agatha Sangma — have been inducted. The latter is the youngest Minister.
The Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha, the tea workers’ union backed by the Congress, and the Assam Tea Tribe Students’ Association have voiced resentment over the non-inclusion of the Congress MP from Dibrugarh, Paban Singh Ghatowar. A representative of the tea tribes, he is the ACMS president. Effigies of Mr. Gogoi were burnt by protestors in tea gardens in Upper Assam.
| Students’ union demands fulfilment of promises after Lok Sabha elections | ||
Guwahati, March 21 : Once bitten twice shy, the AGP and the BJP today put in place a joint mechanism to bind their electoral alliance from the grassroots level to prevent a repeat of their experience in 2001 when the alliance was marred by a lack of co-ordination and infighting. Following a meeting last night, the two parties today formed joint co-ordination committees for the Lok Sabha seats and a similar committee at the state level for election management. The 14-member state-level committee will be jointly headed by Padma Hazarika of the AGP and Indramoni Bora of the BJP as conveners. The AGP will be contesting in six parliamentary seats and the BJP in eight. The last time the two parties forged an alliance was in the 2001 Assembly elections. Addressing the first joint news conference of the alliance today, AGP president Chandra Mohan Patowary said: “This time we are a well-tuned unit and will be devoting our energies and resources equally in all the 14 constituencies. In 2001, the alliance did not have the desired impact as our votes were not properly transferred. But this time we have taken steps so that the BJP’s votes can be transferred to our candidates and vice versa.” Patowary said the alliance was revived on certain common core issues. He said the two parties agreed that if the NDA came to power, priority would be given to stop unabated infiltration from across the border by sealing the Indo-Bangladesh border. The NDA government will also get back Assam’s land that is under Bangladesh’s occupation, Patowary added. Issuance of photo identity cards to all the citizens of the state after upgrading the National Register of Citizens and declaration of flood and erosion in Assam as a national problem are the other common issues. Patowary said peaceful resolution of the militancy problem through dialogue and according ST status to the Koch Rajbongshis, Motaks, Morans, Tea Tribes, Tai Ahoms and Chutias were the other issues on which the two parties shared a common stand. “Based on these common issues, we have decided to go to the electorate to root out the Congress,” Patowary said, claiming that the ruling party had failed to address these issues. He, however, said the AGP had not yet decided whether it would join the government if the NDA came to power. As of now, the priority before the AGP is to elect as many AGP-BJP MPs from the state as possible so that the Congress could not form a government at the Centre, he said. “Assam has witnessed development whenever a non-Congress government came to power at the Centre. It was during the NDA regime that a separate ministry for the development of the Northeast was created, besides initiating steps for several development schemes for the state,” Patowary claimed. The AGP leader, however, expressed concern that the Election Commission has entrusted the state government-owned Amtron to operate the electronic voting machines in the state. | ||
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| Union minister of state for industry Ashwani Kumar at the news conference in Guwahati on Thursday. Picture by Eastern Projections |
Guwahati, March 20 : The Congress today set the tone for the party’s campaign for the Lok Sabha elections in Assam with Union minister of state for industry, Ashwani Kumar, emphasising that the doors for talks with the proscribed Ulfa would remain open.
However, Kumar said there would be zero-tolerance towards those rebels indulging in acts of terrorism.
The minister stressed security and economic development as the party’s key poll planks.
“Terrorism has a local resonance in Assam and we would inflict crushing blows to those waging war against the state. Doors for talks with Ulfa would remain open but we would not compromise on security,” he told reporters here today.
Kumar’s assertion that there would be no let-up in tracking down those behind the October 30 serial blasts in Guwahati also indicated that the counter-insurgency operations in the state would be on.
“I assure you that those behind these acts would be taken to task. It is not that we are only responding to the Mumbai attacks and not to the one in Guwahati. Whether it is Bangladesh or Pakistan, there would be no let-up in isolating countries, which wage war against our country,” he said.
“This is going to be a watershed election because we are going to the polls under extraordinary circumstances. Never before in our history have we suffered anything like the Mumbai terror attack, which needs a resolute national and international response. Then there is the global economic crisis. Therefore, the thrust of our campaign is security and inclusive economic development. And these issues are of equal importance to Assam,” Kumar said.
The minister of state, however, did not mince words to take digs at the AGP-BJP combine, the AUDF or the “stillborn” third front.
“The choice is between a secular and communal polity. The AGP-BJP combination lurks in the past and has no agenda. The AUDF would be a spoiler to some extent. The people of Assam, I am sure, are wise enough not to waste their votes,” he said.
Besides dwelling on how the gas cracker project would generate direct and indirect jobs to one lakh “Assamese youths”, he also informed that the per capita income had increased from Rs 10,467 in 2001 to Rs 22,081 after seven years of Congress rule in Assam.
“These figures tell their own story. Congress holds out hope for the youths of the state. Instead of a divisive agenda, we have a unifying agenda,” he said. The minister also said the Congress candidates for Dhubri and Lakhimpur would be announced “in a day or two”.
The government has earmarked Rs100 crore in the interim budget to kickstart the UID project
New Delhi, feb 25 : The Unique Identification Authority of India will formulate plans and policies to implement ambitious UID project in the country aimed at assigning a unique identification number to each citizen, the government said today.
“Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) shall have the responsibility to lay down plans and policies to implement Unique Identification (UID) scheme, shall own and operate UID database...,” Minister of State for Planning and Parliamentary Affairs V Narayanasamy said in a reply in the Lok Sabha.
The Authority has been notified on 28 January as an attached office under the aegis of Planning Commission with an initial core team of 115 officials and staff, he said adding that a governance structure to manage the UID system is in the process of establishment and that the state governments would be active partners in its activity.
The government has earmarked Rs100 crore in the interim budget to kickstart the UID project. “A provision of Rs100 crore has been made in the annual plan 2009-10 for this,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said.
UID aims at eliminating the need for multiple identification mechanism prevalent across various government departments.
The project will be helpful in better monitoring and targeting of social benefits and employment programmes and identifying synergies among various ID initiatives prevalent in the country, Narayanasamy added.
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