After making an exit last month from the BJP, a party he had been with for over three decades, veteran leader and former Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain on Wednesday joined the regional party, Asom Jatiya Parishad.
Gohain, 74, is a former Assam BJP president and four-time Lok Sabha MP from the Nagaon constituency. He had, in recent years, emerged as the most prominent face of the internal rift within the Assam unit between the old guard and the new crop that rose under Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, following Sarma’s departure from the Congress to join the BJP in 2015.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW VIDEO
Gohain joining the AJP with a group of his supporters marks a dramatic shift. Gohain, who represented Nagaon from 1999 to 2019, was inducted as a Union Minister of State in the Modi Cabinet in 2016, during his last term as MP. The AJP was only formed in 2020 following the anti-CAA protests and in the run-up to the last legislative assembly election.
The party is yet to experience electoral success. It had contested in 82 seats in the last assembly election and had failed to win any. Its party president, Lurinjyoti Gogoi, had contested last year’s Lok Sabha election as part of an alliance led by the Congress but lost the Dibrugarh seat to now Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.
At the joining ceremony, Gohain acknowledged the unusual nature of his move.
“I was in a national party, where I was for more than 40 years. The question is, why did I leave it after 40 years to join a regional party, in which there are no elected representatives? People normally join a party towards which there is a wave,” he said.
Like at the time of his exit from the BJP, he accused the party of “betraying” Assam’s interests. He also stated that he has lost faith in national parties in addressing the needs of the state.
Story continues below this ad
“My main aim in joining a regional party is that we have seen the rule of different national parties here. But what we have seen from these and what we continue to see is that it is not advisable to place our state in the hands of Delhi… There has been a ‘Hitleri’ rule, and they have divided and damaged the state. Everyone is feeling insecure, and no community has a right over any constituency. They have broken and damaged the Assamese people with the recent delimitation exercise… They have looted the state,” he said.
He called for an “inclusive regionalism”, bringing together different communities which reside in the state.
Gohain’s exit from the BJP was the most high-profile exit from the party since it came to power in the state. It comes in the run-up to the crucial state legislative assembly election next year.
