Assam polls: Congress assessing CM Tarun Gogoi; fears Delhi-like situation

NEW DELHI: With the upcoming Assam assembly election considered the next hotspot in the post-Bihar political landscape, leaders of the All India Congress Committee and its state units are caught in a tricky situation: between the indispensability of marathoner CM Tarun Gogoi and the fatigue of his 15-year stint.

Even nascent efforts by the Congress – aided by the JD(U) – to prop up a Bihar-like anti-BJP grand alliance in Assam by roping in the All India United Democratic Front led (AUDF) by Badruddin Ajmal will have to tread carefully.

Volatile personal relations between Gogoi and Ajmal led to a fallout between them. The AUDF won 18 seats in the 126-member Assam assembly in 2011, second only to 78 won by the Gogoi-led Congress.

Gogoi has called for an anti-BJP alliance in Assam, where the term of the assembly ends in June. Congress leaders are open to his call but haven’t missed the subtext: Gogoi is positioning himself as the indispensable leader of the proposed alliance, especially after he deftly made the AICC a party in driving out Himanta Biswa Sarma – once a potential alternative leader in the state Congress – to the BJP. Gogoi is also subtly working on his Ahom caste factor to cement his position.

Congress leaders say that having completed a record-breaking hattrick victory in Assam, Gogoi is poised to either better his record or take himself down the road that another Congress hat-trick CM – Sheila Dikshit – had taken in the 2013 Delhi polls, when she lost to the Kejriwal-led AAP.

“On the plus point, there is no Kejriwal-like challenger in Assam and AGP ( Asom Gana Parishad) is in a shambles.

Yet, two factors are worrying – the all-out campaign by the BJP to tap Hindu segments and anti-incumbency, then the rifts within the state Congress,” said another party leader.

Sources said the AICC, working to give Gogoi the best possible window-dressing, plans to play up two factors – projecting him as the “Mr Clean of Assam who faces no personal corruption charges” and the “peace messiah who brought Assam to normalcy.”

“The biggest question is who will play the firefighter’s role, which Himanta did during the past two elections,” said a Congress legislator.

There are whispers that Gogoi is working to install his son Gaurav as a future leader, an issue that triggered the revolt by the Himanta faction.