Debabrata Saikia elected Congress legislature party leader in Assam

GUWAHATI: The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) has elected senior leader and Nazira MLA, Debabrata Saikia as its leader in the assembly. He was unanimously elected as the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader by the party MLAs.
Saikia was named the Leader of the Opposition in the last assembly but lost the position after the number of Congress legislators reduced to less than the required number in the House.
By virtue of being the leader of the biggest group of Opposition MLAs, he is going to be the obvious choice for the post again.
Congress has emerged as the single largest party in the Opposition bench with 29 MLAs in the 126-member assembly.
While former minister Rakibul Hussain has again been elected as the deputy leader of the CLP, another senior Congress leader, Wajed Ali Choudhury will be the chief whip of the CLP and Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha has been named as his deputy.
Rupjyoti Kurmi has been elected as the secretary of the CLP and Susanta Borgohain as the spokesperson. Rekibuddin Ahmed is the treasurer of the CLP.
Chairperson of the media department of the APCC, Bobbeeta Sharma, said Congress will have a spirited opposition in the assembly who will keep a watchful eye on the performance and policies adopted by the BJP government.
"The BJP had given a long list of electoral promises and we would like to see that those are fulfilled. In the assembly elections of 2016 in the vision document, the BJP had said that they would fulfil the Assam Accord in letter in spirit. But what did we see? Instead, they brought a law like CAA which was against the very basis of the foundation of the Assam Accord. Hence we have to be very vigilant on what policy decisions they take and what kind of legislation they would want to bring in the future," she said.
Since the Congress had raised various issues concerning different sections of society in their manifesto, Sharma said that Congress MLAs would also urge the government to see that pertinent issues like employment of youth, women safety, micro finance loan burden, spiralling price rise, scheduled tribe status of the six communities, tea workers wage hike are looked into at the earliest.
"Our purpose is to serve the people of Assam and we hope to play the role of a constructive opposition. We would also like the people of Assam - our voters also to remain alert and aware of the performance of the BJP Government," she added.