Will dissidence in Assam Congress end now?

GUWAHATI, June 23: On Monday, AICC observer for Assam Mallikarjun Kharge held discussions with all the Congress MLAs, MPs and other party leaders in Guwahati regarding the issue of dissidence in the State Congress. He held separate discussions with all the party MLAs and MPs in the city in the evening. On Tuesday, he will again hold such discussions.

Kharge sought their opinion on the issue of leadership change in the State government. The dissident group said that if such a situation as the one prevailing at the moment were to continue, the party would be uprooted in the 2016 Assembly elections. Therefore, the group pressed for a leadership change, according to a party source. The meeting was a closed–door one.

On the other hand, Tarun Gogoi loyalists said that Gogoi should continue till the 2016 Assembly polls. They said that the Congress had won the hearts of the people of the State due chiefly to his contributions as Chief Minister.

Kharge will be presenting a report on the state of the Assam Congress to party president Sonia Gandhi after he returns to New Delhi on Tuesday.

After landing in Guwahati at around 11.50 am, Kharge held a meeting with senior Congress leaders at Rajiv Bhavan at around 3.45 pm. He was accompanied by another AICC leader Ashish Kulkarni. Present at the meeting were Tarun Gogoi, APCC president Bhubaneswar Kalita and many ministers of the State.

Kharge said that the BJP could win the general election this time due to its marketing policy, but no one thought that the saffron party would be exposed so badly in view of its decision to go in for a steep hike in railway fares. He appealed to all the Congress workers ‘‘to work unitedly to uphold the Congress principles and policies’’.

After the meeting, he held a separate meeting with APCC office–bearers and presidents of district Congress committees. He sought their views on leadership change as demanded by the dissident group of the State Congress and reasons behind the party’s debacle in the Lok Sabha polls.

The whole picture on the dissidence issue and the demand by dissidents for a change in the leadership of the State government will be clear only after Kharge submits his report to Sonia Gandhi.

Interestingly, a three–member committee comprising Motilal Vora, CP Joshi and Gulam Nabi Azad had already been working to tackle the dissidence issue in the State Congress, but as a source said, their neutrality was suspected as two of them were in support of dissidents, which forced Sonia Gandhi to appoint a ‘‘neutral person’’ in the form of Kharge to take care of the issue.

(Source) The Sentinel Assam — The Largest Media group of North-East India — focused on news publishing. Combined circulation of the group is over 120,000 newspapers per day, making it the largest newspaper group in the region. The Sentinel is the only English daily in the Northeast India with five editions published simultaneously from Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Shillong, Silchar and Itanagar. For all local, news from Assam, national and international news please visit http://www.sentinelassam.com/