Amit Shah will incite riots in poll-bound Assam: AICC

GUWAHATI: The Congress' Assam in-charge national secretary Vikas Upadhyay alleged that Union Home Minister Amit Shah's visit to Assam is to make party cadres to incite riots in the State.

In a statement issued to the media on Thursday, Upadhyay said, "Home Minister Amit Shah is visiting states with upcoming elections and advising BJP cadres to incite riots in order to influence the outcome by polarizing the voters. Shah's visit to Assam after Bengal is a part of this strategy only."

Upadhyay cautioned the people of Assam not to fall prey to this. He said, the people here fought a lot on the issue of linguistic identity and citizenship, but the BJP, which promised to trace and repatriate illegal migrants, used them only to grab power.

Upadhyay said, in Assam, the BJP had fallen flat on the promises it made of providing employment and development of the State. "They could not do any work in the last five years. The condition of government schools is poor and inflation is at its peak whereas the Government is busy privatizing state's public sector property. The BJP is trying to polarize votes by playing religion-based politics with the sole purpose of grabbing power by any means," he said.

Upadhyay also said that the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has been brought for the purpose of regaining power, as well as in this disputed bill it has been clarified that this bill will not be implemented in the autonomous administrative region of India. It is clear from this that how the BJP wants to mislead the people of Assam by adopting the policy of 'divide and rule'.

"The BJP is continuing to trick the people of Assam and now Home Minister Amit Shah is no longer confident of winning the elections on the strength of his own party leaders and hence is carrying out nationwide campaign of inducting the elected representatives of the Congress and other Opposition parties in the BJP by using all possible means. Bringing down the elected government, coercing elected representatives of other party leaders to join BJP by using unscrupulous means has become the character of BJP," Upadhyay said, and accused Shah of inciting violence in all the states, including Assam which are headed for elections.

He reminded that it was Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1985 who had taken care of Assam and announced a package for its economic development and it was decided to set up an oil refinery, paper mill and technical institute here.It was then also decided that there should be special legislation and administrative measures to protect the cultural, social and linguistic identity of Assamese-speaking people, but the BJP has put these aspects in the background in the last 5 years, he added.

Also Read: Union Home Minister Amit Shah to visit Assam on Dec 26

Also Watch: Scam in TET Results?