Wary of a AGP, BJP tie-up, Congress begins preparations in earnest

GUWAHATI, January 23: With the Election Commission announcing that polls to the Assam Assembly would be held in the later part of April, the Congress party fearful that the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the BJP would join hands to prevent it from returning to power, has begun preparations in right earnest. To nip any such alliance in the bud, the party has plastered pre-election graffiti all over and started spewing venom against the possible alliance. Pradesh Congress Committee president Tarun Gogoi has already accused the AGP and BJP of entering into a tacit understanding in this respect. So fearful is the Congress of such a prospect that Gogoi has even gone on record saying it was state Governor SK Sinha who had taken the initiative to get the two parties closer towards an alliance. Both AGP and BJP, however, maintain that there's no question of the two parties going for any tie-up. In fact, the BJP has even described the AGP as a "dead horse", with senior leader and Union Minister of State for Water Resources, Bijoya Chakravarty adding that the BJP would be a loser if there was any alliance with the regional party. The Congress has accused both the AGP and the BJP of failing to deliver the goods, and has adopted the infiltration issue and the ISI as its two major planks to criticise the two parties. "Why don't Mahanta and Vajpayee take any step if ISI activity is really on the rise?" asks the Congress in one of the graffiti. It has also blamed the BJP and the AGP for sky-rocketing prices of essential commodities, and has also picked up the cause of state government employees to criticise the two parties. It has opposed downsizing of the state government and held both the AGP and BJP responsible for this. "The MoU signed by the NDA-government in Delhi and the AGP-led government in Assam has further complicated the unemployment problem of the state," said another poster, one of the several that have appeared all over the city since the polls were announced. The Congress, as usual, was the first to constitute a full-fledged poll committee, with the party even collecting nominations from prospective candidates. The party has also projected Gogoi for the chief minister's post, and has chosen Titabar as the constituency from where he would contest. Gogoi is currently a member of the Lok Sabha. Last week, Gogoi held a series of public meetings in different places in Titabar constituency in Jorhat district, during which he lambasted the ruling party as a "total failure" and appealed to the people to reject it in the forthcoming elections.The Congress has also criticised the AGP on developmental issues as well as the latter's failure to stop killings in the state. "What happened to the AGP's sonar Assam (golden Assam) promise?" asked one graffiti. Yet another well-rhymed slogan said, "Oh my dear Assam. One finds human skeletons when one ploughs the fields," referring to the numerous killings by militant groups that has rocked the state in recent months.