AICC toed Gogoi line on AUDF

Kalyan Barooah

NEW DELHI, March 14 – AICC has taken a final decision not to have any electoral truck with the Asom United Democratic Front (AUDF), despite sustained effort by a section of Congressmen to seal a deal, highly placed sources said. On March 3, a crucial meeting was held at 10 Janpath, which was chaired by Congress president, Sonia Gandhi and attended by AICC in-charge for Assam, M Verappa Moily, External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, PCC president, Bhubaneswar Kalita, among other senior leaders.

Acting on inputs provided by a group of State Congressmen, believed to be Gogoi-baiters, the AICC convened a meeting to discuss the possibility of aligning with AUDF.

However, the Chief Minister opposed the move tooth and nail, sources said.

He asserted that the Congress would not stand to gain much by the alliance but on the other hand, the loss of tying-up with a Party, once described as ‘communal’ by the Congress, would alienate its core support base cutting across all sections. It was his contention that the Party’s support base among the minority community despite emergence of AUDF, was intact.

The alliance would directly benefit the AGP-BJP alliance and people of Assam would not support the Congress Party, he reportedly argued.

Sources said the Congress president went along the argument and endorsed the decision not to align with AUDF, sources said.

The Congress has been insisting that a large section of AUDF was willing to join with the Party, but the of leadership has been preventing it.

A group of Congress-men including some sitting MPs and ex-MPs and MLAs had petitioned the Congress president to align with AUDF citing disenchantment of the minority community with the Congress Party. These party men had argued that AUDF would inflict serious damage in at least six seats by splitting the minority votes.

They had supported the move to forge an alliance with AUDF ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in keeping with the prevailing ‘mood’ of the minority community.

Meanwhile, in an apparent bid to dispel the purported feeling among the minority community, the Congress is likely to rope in top leaders of community to campaign for the Party in the election.

In this connection, the Chief Minister this evening held a close door meeting with Ahya Bukhari, brother of the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid.

Meanwhile, talking to this newspaper, the Chief Minister said the Congress party’s election plank would development and positive attitude. He said he was going to attack the Opposition with facts and figures and compare the development works that have taken place during the NDA and UPA regimes.

He said the party is going to focus on the achievements of the State Governments with details of the projects and schemes taken up during Gogoi regime.

Assam has got unprecedented number of projects and schemes in different sectors during the UPA rule led by Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh.

On the problem of militancy, the effort would be to convince the people that the Government has managed to isolate the militants.

Meanwhile, the candidates for the two remaining seats of Dhubri and Lakhimpur is likely to be announced next week, as AICC is expected to take up finalisation of all pending seats at one go.

Abdul Hamid is reported to be ahead in the race for Dhubri seat, while Ranee Narah is emerging as the hot favourite to back the Lakhimpur seat, sources said.