Hours ahead of a crucial BJP meeting to finalise candidates for the Assam election, senior Congress leader and MP Pradyut Bordoloi joined the BJP on Wednesday afternoon.
Bordoloi, a two-term MP from Nagaon and a multiple-term former minister in Tarun Gogoi-led Congress governments in the state, is one of the most senior leaders in the Assam Congress. He had submitted his resignation to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday night.
In a rapid succession of events, he joined the BJP in Delhi in the presence of Assam BJP president Dilip Saikia, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union Minister of State Pabitra Margherita on Wednesday afternoon. Sarma said the process was sped up keeping in mind the parliamentary board meeting later in the day, and that the Assam BJP will recommend that the party field Bordoloi, who is liable to be disqualified from the Lok Sabha for defection, as a candidate for the upcoming election.
Not only was Bordoloi one of the most senior leaders of the Assam Congress, but he has also been a sharp critic of the BJP dispensation. A month ago, the Congress had released a ‘People’s Chargesheet’ against the Sarma-led BJP government in Assam, with charges ranging from “institutionalised corruption” to “human rights violations”. Bordoloi was the chairman of the committee that had drafted the document.
Further, his son Prateek has been fielded by the Congress as its candidate from the Margherita constituency, which he himself has represented for four terms as a Congress MLA.
Speaking to the media immediately after his joining, he said that the call to leave the Congress and join the BJP was the “most difficult decision of my life,” and that he has made a “sacrifice” since he still has three years of his tenure as MP left.
He said that he has joined the BJP in the “interest of Assam” and cited his long relationship of working alongside Sarma, when they were both part of the Congress.
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“The Chief Minister and I have been colleagues for a long time, and we have worked together to bring peace to Assam and have worked together in the cabinet… The Chief Minister has a lot of spirit to work for Assam, and I want to help to take Assam forward,” he said.
He had first raised his revolt against the Congress on Sunday, when he had written to the AICC in-charge of Assam, Jitendra Singh, saying that he had been “humiliated” during the ongoing deliberations over screening candidates for Laharighat — one of the Assembly segments under his Nagaon parliamentary constituency. He said that his concerns over alleged patronage by the sitting Congress MLA from Laharighat, Asif Nazar, to an individual who was arrested for attacking him had been undermined and ignored.
On Wednesday, he said that this was “just one reason” and said that he had been “humiliated,” isolated and “left out of decision making” in the Congress over the last couple of years.
“I have been humiliated in various ways over the years. The respect I should have received as a senior leader, I haven’t received that. And recently, in this election environment, they brought one MP from Uttar Pradesh, Imran Masood, to Assam, and he was given the responsibility to screen candidates in my constituency. When he started working there, I felt that he was a very communal person,” he said.
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In his letter to Jitendra Singh, Bordoloi wrote that the last straw for him was when Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi allegedly remained silent when Masood dismissed his concerns about the Laharighat MLA as “false” during a Congress Central Election Committee meeting in New Delhi on March 13.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra called his exit “unfortunate” and attributed it to his unhappiness about the assembly seat selection.
“It is very unfortunate. And I think he was upset over one ticket allocation, and I think that I wish we had a chance to have a conversation about it,” she said.
In the meantime, Assam Congress leader Mira Borthakur alleged that his raising issues of internal differences and exit just weeks before the election has to be a “calculated political move for personal gain”.
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With Pradyut Bordoloi’s entry into the BJP, the circle of former Congress colleagues surrounding Chief Minister Sarma continues to grow, and the Congress’s inability to retain its prominent faces is likely to hit the party’s image in the upcoming election. For the BJP, Bordoloi’s exit, and that of former Assam Congress president Bhupen Borah just a month ago, will serve as ammunition against Gaurav Gogoi’s leadership in the Congress.
