GUWAHATI, April 8 � Asserting that it was the Congress which brought Assam back from the brink following the 'AGP misrule', Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi today said that the State's future would be secure only in the hands of the Congress.
Addressing a party rally at the Khanapara Veterinary College playground, Gandhi said that the Congress inherited a terrible law and order situation from the AGP when people feared to venture out even in day besides an economy that had collapsed but "the Congress managed to reverse the trend successfully in the last ten years."
"Now we want to sustain the trend of peace and development further and this we will achieve with an overwhelming popular mandate," she added.
Claiming that the fronts of health and education witnessed substantial improvement during the Congress regime, Gandhi said that the coming years would see further bolstering of the sectors besides adequate thrust on infrastructure development and employment generation.
Taking potshots at the BJP which she said was obsessed with dividing the people on communal lines in pursuance of its narrow sectarian agenda, Gandhi exhorted the electorate to "identify the forces that want to divide brothers."
The Congress supremo said that the BJP had no moral right to talk about infiltration as it did nothing to address the issue when in power. "The BJP-led NDA did not even respond when the Chief Minister took up the issue of infiltration with the Home Ministry. What right does the BJP have to accuse the Congress of doing nothing on infiltration?" she questioned.
Stating that securing the interests of the common man -- particularly the underprivileged and the poor -- was at the core of the Congress agenda, Gandhi said that for the Congress politics was much more than merely securing power.
"Unlike other parties which want power for power's sake, what we practise is not politics but a commitment to serve the people," she said.
Terming the youth as the nation's greatest asset, the Congress president said that the Right to Education (RTE) Act reflected the ideal of the party in empowering the youth.
Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, in his address, slammed the BJP for indulging in a "false propaganda" to malign the Congress. "The BJP had done great injustice to Assam, and now it is spreading a false propaganda to hide its failures and double standards," he said.
Reacting to the BJP's call for saving Assam from becoming a part of Bangladesh due to unabated infiltration, Gogoi said that the need to save Assam did not arise as "those are our own people and I can challenge that."
Accusing the BJP of being insincere in sealing the porous Assam-Bangladesh border, the Chief Minister said that it was during the Congress' tenure in the State that work on border fencing progressed besides a host of measures aimed at border protection such as floating outposts, night patrolling, etc.
�The BJP is here to polarize the State on communal lines but we will never allow it to achieve that," he said.
