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| Durga Bhumij at the news conference at Doomdooma Press Club on Monday. Picture by Dinesh Goyal |
Dibrugarh, March 21: The sitting Congress MLA from Doomdooma, Durga Bhumij, who was denied a ticket for a second term, today resigned from the party vowing to teach the Congress a lesson for its allegedly betraying him and the people of the tea community-dominated constituency.
Addressing reporters at Doomdooma Press Club today, Bhumij, who had resigned from the influential All Assam Tea Tribes Students Association in 2006 to join the Congress, said he had been betrayed by two senior Congress leaders — Dibrugarh MP Paban Singh Ghatowar and Assam health and family welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma — for helping Rani Narah during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
“Ghatowar and Sarma had asked me not to help Rani Narah during the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 since she was not in the good books of chief minister Tarun Gogoi. However, I refused to obey them and helped Narah, who later won from the Lakhimpur constituency. She got around 30,000 votes from the Doomdooma segment, which comes under Lakhimpur. This is why both Ghatowar and Sarma used all their influence to deny me the party ticket. So, I have decided to resign from the party,” Bhumij said.
Bhumij has filed his nominations as an Independent from Doomdooma and said the main contest in the constituency would be between him and BJP candidate Dilip Moran. “The Congress candidate, Rupesh Gowala, who does not even know the four corners of the constituency properly, will be pushed to third position. I will teach the Congress a lesson for the treatment they meted out,” Bhumij said.
The leader said along with him, thousands of Congress workers and supporters have left the party today and have promised to help him in the elections.
“All the eight mandal committees under Doomdooma constituency — Hatijan, Koomsang, Mankhowa, Bordubi, Rangajan, Doimukhia, Tiphuk and Bandarkhati — have resigned en masse along with the youth, tea and minority cells. Members of the tea cell of Doomdooma, too, have promised to help me,” he said.
Ghatowar dismissed all allegations raised by Bhumij as mere “loose talk” and nothing. “He has lost the ticket purely because of non-performance and for not fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of the people in Doomdooma constituency,” Ghatowar said over phone.