GUWAHATI, May 31 � The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) today said it will �take up legal actions� against Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over the latter�s alleged statements made about seven years ago, painting�the regional�party as an insurgent�group and equating it with Palestinian insurgent outfit Hamas.
�We have started the legal process for serving a notice on Rahul Gandhi. The nitty-gritty of the legal option will depend on our lawyers who are studying the matter,� AGP president and former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta told reporters here.
As per cables from Wikileaks and the Public Library of US Diplomacy, the Gandhi scion had said that the Indian Government�s strategy had been to allow the �insurgents� to form the Government in�Assam�and advocated application of the same strategy by the United States while dealing with the Hamas. Gandhi reportedly made the comments during an interaction with senior US officials on February 27, 2006.
Mahanta said that both Gandhi and Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who has supported the former�s comments, should tender a public apology to the families of 855 martyrs of the Assam Agitation and to the people of the State.
�The agitationists used the method of non-violence propagated by Mahatma Gandhi. However, the then Congress governments in both Delhi and Dispur tried to crush the democratic aspirations of the people of Assam by taking recourse to repressive measures,� Mahanta said.
He said that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi�s name has also come up in Wikileaks cables in April. The cables reported that Gandhi had during the 1970s acted as a negotiator for the Swedish company, Saab-Scania when it was trying to sell its Viggen fighter aircraft to India.
�When the cables were released, Congress spokesperson Janardhan Dwivedi termed the report about Rajiv Gandhi as unfounded and baseless and accused Wikileaks of being CIA agents. Does that mean that Gogoi has links with CIA?� Mahanta questioned.
He called upon Gogoi to give public evidence of the AGP�s involvement with insurgent groups. �It is in fact Congress which has taken help of such groups to grab power in many States,� he said, adding that many senior AGP members, including former minister Nagen Sarma, had fallen victim to attacks by militant outfits.