Assam Assembly polls | Congress releases ‘charge sheet’ against BJP

CAA, National Register of Citizens top the list of 12 ‘failures’ of Assam govt.

Assam Congress president Ripun Bora.

The Congress on Sunday released a 12-point ‘chargesheet’ against the BJP-led alliance government in Assam for its alleged failure on different fronts.

‘Betraying’ the indigenous people by bringing in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and stalling the process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) top the list of ‘failures’ of the Assam government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal.

“The BJP had promised to protect

jati [race],

mati [land] and

bheti [foundation] but imposed the CAA to welcome illegal migrants and threaten the language, culture and identity of the people of Assam. The party also failed to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord,” the Congress said.

It slammed the saffron party for keeping the NRC exercise on hold, affecting the genuine citizens left out of the citizens’ list. Some 19.06 lakh people were excluded from the NRC published in August 2019.

The Congress criticised the BJP for letting the tea plantation workers down by not fulfilling its 2016 poll promise of increasing their daily wages to ₹351 and backtracking on the promise to grant the Scheduled Tribe status to six communities.

Rising unemployment, appointment scams, selling of the State’s resources to corporate houses cheaply, controlling legal and illegal trades through syndicates, abnormal price rice, ignoring the flood and erosion problem, not expelling any foreigner and denial of minimum support price to farmers were the other failures listed in the Congress chargesheet.