Statement on Hindi speaking misinterpreted: Tarun Gogoi

After writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remove acting Assam governor P B Acharya and to appoint a fulltime governor, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi of Saturday shot off a complaint to President Pranab Mukherjee requesting him to immediately intervene. “The state government under Tarun Gogoi is misleading the people regarding his (Acharya’s) statement”, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav said at a press conference here.

In a statement on Friday, Gogoi said that Union Home Minister’s comment on “secularism” is a direct aberration of the BJP from the tenets of the Preamble and exposes the party’s hobnobbing with the RSS ideology. Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, during a discussion in the Lok Sabha on the commitment to India’s Constitution as part of the 125th birth anniversary celebration of Dr BR Ambedkar, charged the Chief Minister of Assam with trying to create social tension in the State with such statements.

“I have never uttered anything against the Hindi speaking people. “Assam is the only state having Development Councils for minority communities, including the Hindi-speaking people”, he claimed. “Such direct “endorsement” is responsible for fanning out “intolerance” which the country has been inflicted with for the last few months”, Gogoi said. He also said that his government would soon constitute a Development Council for Hindi-speaking people so that they could forge ahead on the path of growth and development. The chief minister also accused BJP’s national functionaries of trying to impose Hindi pronunciations, while referring to Assamese, and described this as an invasion by Hindi-speaking people.

“In my political career spanning several decades I was the AICC in-charge for Bihar and UP”.

Citing another instance, Chief Minister Gogoi said that Governor Acharya unilaterally altered a panel of six names belonging to the unrepresented communities as nominated members submitted by the Bodoland Territorial Areas and recommended by the Council of Ministers and replaced four of the names with nominees of his own choice. “Unlike the BJP party (which is) dominated by Hindi-speaking leaders whose writ runs on our spineless local BJP leaders who more often remain mute for their petty interests, our Hindi-speaking leaders in the Congress party only advise us on important issues but in no way diktat terms”, Gogoi said.

Acharya has been holding the charge of acting Assam governor along with Nagaland. Former minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “Let the congress leaders explain as who is Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and from which constituency they are elected”. BJP state unit president and chairman of campaign committee, Sarbananda Sonowal said BJP here is led by local leadership.