Former Assam CM takes responsibility for Congress poor performance

Former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi here on Wednesday owned the responsibility for the defeat of the party in the just-concluded Assembly polls while begging an apology to the people for failing to fulfil their expectations. Mr Gogoi told reporters, “Yes, I am responsible for the poll debacle. I am the leader. If I am not responsible, then who will be ”

Probably his government failed to fulfil the expectations of people and so they were defeated in the poll, he said.

“We will analyse and introspect why we faced such a debacle. We must have committed some mistakes. We apologise to the people for that. We will now strengthen the party. We are working on how to reorganise the party. The challenge is to find out the mistakes and go to the people,” Mr Gogoi said.

Equating the situation to 1985, when the AGP stormed into power after the Assam agitation, Mr Gogoi said that foreigner’s issue played the key role. “The AGP had benefited in 1985 and this time it was the BJP. They (BJP) succeeded in dividing the people by doing publicity that existence of Assamese and Hindus are at stake. We took steps on the infiltration issue. But the way the RSS presented it, we could not guess it. Already reports have come out that over 25,000 RSS members worked during the polls,” Mr Gogoi said.

He, however, pointed out that the Congress even after its defeat polled 31 per cent votes whereas the BJP alone got 29 per cent votes. It is significant that the BJP-led alliance got 41 per cent vote together.

The three-time ex-chief minister argued, “In 2011, we got 39 per cent votes. This time, it decreased from that, but increased from what we got in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. We are thankful to the people for giving us chance to serve them for 15 years. We succeeded in many fronts but failed at some.”

Mr Gogoi also clarified that he doesn’t have any plan to retire from politics and his party will now prepare for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.