The congress yesterday mounted pressure on the United Front government for action against the AGP-led coalition government in Assam in view of the growing incidents of violence, and made a case for the imposition of Presidents rule in the trouble-torn state. The AGP and some of its allies in the state are partners in the United Front.
A series of developments during the day placed the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta government in the dock. The state assembly admitted a Congress-sponsored censure motion against Mahanta, while the state unit of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party petitioned governor Loknath Mishra to dismiss the coalition government for its alleged failure to tackle violence in lower Assam, and to hold talks with ULFA and Bodo militants.
The Centre has also taken a serious note of the situation in Assam, and has decided to send a team to study the situation. It would be led by Union home secretary K Padmanabhaiah.
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Speaker Ganesh Kutum admitted the motion on the first day of the assembly session. The motion is supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Kutum said the debate on the motion would be held after an all-party goodwill mission of the assembly visits the affected areas later this week.
Tarun Gogoi, president of the state Congress, demanded the immediate imposition of Presidents rule in the state. He led a party delegation to Mishra, and presented a memorandum urging him to recommend central rule in view of deterioraing law and order in the state. The Congress had also sent a fax message to President K R Narayanan, demanding central intervention to protect the lives of innocent people in militant activities, particularly in the Nalbari district.
Early this week, the West Bengal unit of the Congress had sought Central intervention in the state in view of the recent massacre of Bengalis by Bodo militants. There is a strong feeling in the state unit that if the Centre did not take action against a government led by one of its frontline constituents, Congress president Sitaram Kesri should withdraw support to the I K Gujral government.
Lambasting the government for allegedly failing to protect the life and property of the people, Gogoi said the administrative machinery had totally collapsed due to inept handling of the situation by the government.
Even Sanjoy Ghosh, Avard-NE activist who had worked for the development of the backward river island of Majuli, was not spared and all these incidents were neither unexpected or unannounced, Gogoi said.
The memorandum wanted the governor to save the state from systematic ruin by various extremist organisations. It accused the AGP-led government of failing dismally in its primary duty of protecting life and property and in promoting developmental activities which, it said, had come to a grinding halt. The memorandum said that during the last 15 months of AGP rule, unabated killings, extortions, abductions, gunning down of innocent people and terrorism had become the order of the day. Villagers in disturbed areas were being compelled to spend sleepless nights and even desert their homes because of acute panic created by unwarranted acts of violence and terror.
All this revealed the sheer hollowness of the government as well as its incapability to run the state administration any longer, it said and noted that industrialists were moving away in view of the situation.
The state unit of Samajwadi Party urged the governor in a memorandum to take all possible steps for starting a dialogue with the ULFA and Bodo militant outfits to solve the vexed problems and also boost the administrations morale in the states interest. As the demands of the ULFA and the Bodo militants were purely political, which later turned into armed struggles, the memorandum suggested that a political solution would be more viable.
instead of treating it as a law and order problem only.
The violence reveals the hollowness of the AGP-led government. Industrialists are also shying away in view of the situation.