Guwahati, April 1: The Congress today tried to kill the flavour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "tea connection" with Assam and questioned his government's failure to appoint a permanent chairman for the Tea Board of India.
Modi had a few days ago in a poll rally claimed a deep connection with Assam for having been a chaiwallah once. He said he owed a lot to the state.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, while talking to the media at the party's state head-office here today, asked: "If you (Modi) love Assam tea, why has your government not appointed a permanent chairman for the Tea Board of India so far?"
The chairman's post has been lying vacant since December 2013.
Instead, Ramesh said, the BJP government had reflected its apathy to Assam's tea industry by reducing plan budget allocation to the tea sector to Rs 130 crore last year from Rs 170 crore in the previous year.
"While you are talking about your love for Assam's tea, you are reducing fund allocation for the tea sector in your budgets," he said.
Drawing the battlelines, Ramesh said this election in Assam - between the Congress and the BJP-RSS - would be the "most significant" and "historical" one. Reiterating AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi's call for caution, he said if the BJP comes to power, the state would be controlled either from Delhi or Nagpur (the RSS headquarters).
"Till now Assam has been ruled from here. Once the BJP comes to power, it will be ruled either from Delhi or Nagpur."
Ramesh alleged that the All India United Democratic Front has an informal understanding with the BJP and the AIUDF's talk of secularism was nothing but "fake secularism". "The AIUDF say they are a secular party. But they are with Narendra Modi and (BJP national president) Amit Shah. Because of their informal understanding with the BJP, they have fielded candidates in some constituencies only to divide the Congress vote," he said.
Ramesh said during the Congress rule, Assam has shown remarkable development in areas such as health and education. "When the Congress was in power at the Centre, Assam, among others, had received the highest-ever central funds to build roads in the rural areas. After coming to power, the BJP's biggest betrayal to Assam has been removal of the special category status it had been enjoying for decades," he added.
"In fact, the BJP is using development and communal polarisation as jugalbandi to win the election. But (BJP's talk of) development is just a veil, under which lies the party's agenda of communal polarisation," he alleged.
