Won't budge an inch from implementing 'Assam Accord', promises Rahul Gandhi

SIVASAGAR: With the elections inching nearer in Assam, it is pertinent to revisit what the leading political players had promised the state. While the BJP has promised a continuation of its "development dual engine" agenda, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has focussed on issues that concern the natives -- including the 'Assam Accord'. 

Let's take a look back at what Gandhi said during his most recent visit to the state, during which he effectively kicked off the grand old party's campaign that has seen its leaders traverse all the four corners of the state.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, hot on the campaign trail, on February 14 said that the party would not buckle down from implementing the historic 'Assam Accord', signed after a full-blown struggle to evict suspected encroachers from Assamese soil.

Digging up the 'Assam Accord' in front of a sea of supporters in the former Ahom capital of Sivasagar during February 14, Gandhi said that the Congress party would "seriously" ponder upon the issue and implement the same at the earliest if elected to power.

"We will not step back one inch from implementing any of the clauses of the Accord. There is an issue of illegal immigration. However, the people of Assam have the confidence and capability to talk and sort out these issues. If, however, the state is once again divided -- the BJP, RSS, Narendra Modi, or CM (Sonowal) won't be harmed -- Assam will be harmed," Rahul Gandhi said at the Congress rally.

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Once again reiterating the grand old party's stand against the Citizenship Amendment Act, Gandhi said that if the Congress comes to power, the controversial Act will not be implemented "at any cost."

Rahul Gandhi also hinted that the Congress veteran Tarun Gogoi, who passed away following post-COVID complications, was 'insulted' posthumously by the ruling government.

"Once, while we were heading somewhere in a car -- he told me that when there was violence in Assam, people could not know for certain if they would return alive from a public meeting. The team that was back then, tried to unite Assam. And during that tempest, Tarun Gogoi was moulded," he stated, adding that everytime he came to Assam, Gogoi

However, Gandhi complained, Gogoi has been (posthumously) given the same award as one received from a Prime Minister's office's bureaucrat.

"Tarun Gogoi was my guru, hence, I did not like this move. I thought they committed a mistake. On the one hand you hand, you have a giant personality like Gogoi, and on the other, a bureaucrat who only fulfills the PM's agenda," he remarked.