GUWAHATI: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who arrived in the state on Sunday on a two-day visit to campaign for her party, went full throttle in attacking opponent BJP and taunting them for having "two chief ministers" in the state with the government being run from Delhi through remote control. The BJP has abstained from naming its chief ministerial candidate for the Assam election though the tussle for the chief minister’s chair between Sarbananda Sonowal and his cabinet colleague, Himanta Biswa Sarma, is out there in public domain.
As Priyanka hit the campaign trail in former chief minister Hiteswar Saikia’s base, Nazira constituency in upper Assam, she did not spare even BJP’s key regional ally in the NDA, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), calling it the ‘Delhi Gana Parishad’.
"They promised to give you an Assamese chief minister. But what have you got? Two chief ministers and their government cannot function without permission from the leaders in Delhi,” said Priyanka sarcastically in Nazira.
She fired a salvo at the AGP, saying that its big brother BJP has turned the elephant (AGP’s election symbol) into a ‘bheegi billi’ before moving to Khumtai in Golaghat district, the birthplace of AGP, for the third rally of the day.
Priyanka lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving a ‘double-engine’ nomenclature to the government in Assam. “We don’t need a double engine government or two chief ministers in Assam, but we need identity and existence,” she added.
Raising concerns over China’s plans for a dam bordering Arunachal Pradesh, Priyanka questioned Modi’s role in addressing the worries of the people in downstream Assam. “The Brahmaputra has been the lifeline of Assam but the BJP government at the Centre has failed to save the river and the Bhumiputras. The Prime Minister was silent and did not utter a word on the issue, nor did he say anything against Chinese plans to construct dams in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra. Has he taken any step to resist them?” Priyanka asked in her Khumtai rally.
Priyanka addressed three rallies on the same day in upper Assam, covering politically significant Jorhat, Sivasagar and Golaghat districts. She began with a full-throated cry of ‘Joi Aai Asom’, the popular slogan that kept the regional camp rejuvenated in the state since the days of the Assam agitation.
In her first rally at Jorhat, she alleged that the BJP’s ‘biggest betrayal’ was towards the youth. “The BJP government in Assam failed to give 25 lakh jobs, which they promised five years ago. Three lakh government posts in the state are still lying vacant and 40 lakh people are unemployed in Assam,” Priyanka alleged, accusing that every sixth BA pass and every 10th MA pass student is unemployed in Assam.
On Monday, she will be addressing public rallies in Sarupathar, Kaliabor, Nagaon and visit the birthplace of neo-Vaishnavite saint-scholar Srimanta Sankardev, Bardowa Than in central Assam.