'Gaurav Gogoi mere face, Rakibul sole base of Assam Congress': Bhupen Borah ahead of BJP switch

Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that Borah would be joining the BJP on February 22 after meeting him at his residence on Tuesday evening.

Former Assam Congress president Bhupen Borah, who is set to join the BJP, on Wednesday claimed that the party’s state unit is no longer under the control of its chief Gaurav Gogoi and that Dhubri MP Rakibul Hussain is now its “sole base”.

In an interview to PTI-Video, Borah alleged that Gogoi is “just the mere face of the party now”.

“Rakibul Hussain, who had won the Dhubri seat by over 10 lakh votes, is the sole base of the party,” he claimed.

Borah said that after he sent his resignation letter to the Congress high command on Monday, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi called him and spoke at length about the “relationship we shared since 2007”.

“He mentioned how we helped the party grow, and he helped me over the years, which is true, but he did not say a word about my resignation letter,” Borah claimed.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that Borah would be joining the BJP on February 22 after meeting him at his residence on Tuesday evening.

Borah, who was chairman of ‘Assam Sanmilita Mancha’ — a front of 16 opposition parties — detailed a series of disagreements within the party ahead of the 2024 bypolls to five assembly constituencies. He said it had been decided that a CPI(ML) candidate would contest the Behali seat, as the party had secured 40,000 votes there in the previous election.

“I agreed to it, but my proposal was not considered by the AICC, and two or three leaders from the state unit also started discussing other names. Finally, a person was named as the Congress candidate who was, till then, not even a member of the party,” he said.

“The leaders of the other parties in alliance had then told me that if you cannot leave even one seat out of the five, then what is there left to discuss for the 126 seats in the next elections. I then resigned as the head of the coalition on moral grounds, and the Congress candidate lost badly in the election,” he added.

Borah said he had raised the matter at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting but did not receive any response. He also referred to facing personal humiliation, adding, “Now, there is no time to talk about this”.

He further claimed that about a month ago he had written to Gogoi stating that he would address a press conference against him as “I cannot tolerate humiliations anymore”.

“I had shared the letter with senior leaders, including the state in charge, but there was no response. I realised there is no need for me at the party and I resigned,” he said.

According to Borah, Congress state in-charge Jitendra Singh chaired a meeting with six party leaders on February 9, where Borah was assigned the responsibility of taking forward talks for an opposition alliance ahead of the assembly polls.

“I accepted it as it was the party’s decision, and I also felt that an alliance was necessary as Congress could not tackle the BJP alone. I saw a need to unite the anti-BJP votes, which will ensure a good fight in the assembly polls,” he said.

He added that the following day he received a call from Gogoi, who told him that “you are not alone, but Rakibul Hussin will be there with you to take the alliance talks forward”.

“I told him that this was not the decision taken at the meeting. However, as an MP, he can be there, but Gaurav insisted that he should be involved actively in it. In the meantime, Nagaon Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi called me and said that if Rakibul is there, he will not tolerate it,” Borah claimed.

“Amid this, Gaurav publicly said that I was spreading misinformation that I was given the responsibility to lead the alliance talks. I asked him why he was saying so, and I had already spoken to leaders of other parties, including Akhil Gogoi, who told the media about it,” he said.

Borah described the episode as a “public humiliation”.

“I gave 32 years to Congress. I was in Dibrugarh University when the then CM Hiteswar Saikia came and invited me to join the Congress, just like the present CM came yesterday to my residence and asked me to join the BJP,” he said.

Recounting his time in the party, Borah also said he suffered a bleeding nose during Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ near Guwahati.