Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Assam on Monday evening, the Congress brought its entire state leadership to Delhi to draw attention to the “undelivered promises” of the BJP and chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s “corruption”, billing it a “double dhoka” and not a double-engine government as is claimed.

The media conference in Delhi comes close on the heels of the attack on Lok Sabha member Rakibul Hasan in his constituency and the targeting of MP Gaurav Gogoi for his British wife’s professional association with a Pakistani national alleged to have an anti-India agenda.

Both MPs were present at the briefing at the AICC office and led the charge against the Sarma government to assert that they were not running scared.

Others present included AICC general secretary in charge of Assam Jitendra Singh Alwar, Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Bhupen Kumar Bora, Assam Assembly Opposition leader Debabrata Saikia and Lok Sabha member Pradyut Bordoloi.

Taking on the chief minister, Jitendra Singh wanted to know what “magic lamp” Modi had handed Sarma that he had become a “business tycoon” with stakes across sectors.

Seeking to drive home the point, he said the BJP’s election slogan of “Sabka saath, sabka vikaas” in Assam had become “Modiji ka saath aur Himanta ka vikaas”.

The state leadership raised several issues ranging from alleged land grab by Sarma’s family and associates, rat-hole mining in Assam despite a ban, and failure to deliver on the 2014 Lok Sabha election promise to increase tea garden workers’ wages to ₹350 and uphold the Assam Accord.

These issues, Gogoi said, were being flagged in the hope that the Prime Minister would raise them with Sarma when he is in Assam.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X: “Modiji has set up a factory of slogans in Assam, whose mastermind is the most corrupt chief minister of the BJP. Recently, Congress leaders in Assam have been attacked both ways — politically and physically!

“The state of Assam is suffering the consequences of corruption, hatred and misgovernance by the land mafia of the BJP. The unemployment of the youth, the helplessness of the tea garden workers, the rebuke of the hon’ble Supreme Court on the issue of illegal foreigners and the hypocrisy of the BJP are well known. The state has lagged behind on every scale of development and economically.”