Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma cancelled all his pre scheduled events in the upper districts to avoid a clash with meetings and gatherings of Congress’ Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in those areas on January 18-19.
The cancelled programmes included ration card and form distributions of welfare schemes for rural women in Majuli, Jorhat and Dergaon. Subsequently, common people are now “ashamed” of Congress meetings, mentioned the Assam CM adding Rahul Gandhi’s yatra schedule coincided with the government’s dates of form distributions for new welfare scheme.
In the backdrop of allegations labelled by the Congress over the Assam Government and authorities for intentionally fixing dates of the form distribution to coincide with the yatra, Dr Himanta asserted “these dates were announced even before we knew he was coming”.
Talking about his cancelled programmes, he added, “I don’t want to put the district administration in difficulty as Majuli is a small district… I cannot accommodate beyond this… my programmes in upper Assam… were declared a month ago. You cannot get a more large-hearted government.”
In fact, the Assam Government will make sure the programme of Union Home Minister Amit Shah does not coincide with the yatra on January 20. Thus, the date is not fixed yet, informed the CM.
“We are not preventing anyone from attending” the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which will travel across 833 km in Assam’s 17 districts, beginning from Sivasagar on January 18. “However, people don’t even want to go, barring from one community” as they are “ashamed of going to Congress meetings,” he asserted.
On quizzing further about it, CM Himanta said he “don’t have any hesitation in naming the community” which is the Bengali-speaking Muslims, locally known as Miya Muslims. Nowadays, even they don’t desire to go to the Congress meetings because “they have witnessed people receiving benefits of government schemes; we are working for everyone,” he asserted.
Pinning the Congress yatra for “espousing cause of anti-Hinduism”, the CM mentioned Congress are “anti-Hindu and we are pro-Hindu… however, we are not anti-Muslim or anti-Christian or against any community”.
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