Akhil Gogoi has had run-ins with the Assam government since he took the Right to Information (RTI) route to expose alleged wrongdoings in 2005. But it took a turn for the worse in December 2019 when he took to the streets against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). He had been jailed for 18 months for allegedly fomenting violence during the anti-CAA protests and maintaining links with Maoists. On July 1, he was cleared of all charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act.
In 2004-05, Mr. Gogoi led the Doyang-Tengani Sangram Samiti that concentrated on the Doyang-Tengani area of eastern Assam’s Golaghat district where the locals, some of them alleged encroachers on forest land, were experiencing ecological transitions due to the government’s development agenda. He formed the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) around that time to take up issues on a larger scale. The organisation worked on a diverse range of issues affecting farmers and daily wagers — from public distribution system thefts and non-implementation of the rural job scheme, to land rights and fighting big dam projects. About 100 cases were filed against him over the years.
Ironically, the 45-year-old Mr. Gogoi’s political journey began by rejecting the political turn the India Against Corruption campaign, led by Anna Hazare, had taken in 2011. His KMSS dissociated from the movement after Arvind Kejriwal, now the Delhi Chief Minister, and his associates decided to form the Aam Aadmi Party. But the KMSS took the political plunge by forming the Gana Mukti Sangram Asom in March 2015 for “changing the capitalist system of India”. Later, the KMSS mobilised support for fighting the Sarbananda Sonowal-led government over its “Hindutva” and “anti-people” agenda, specifically the bid to implement the CAA.
Sedition charges
The anti-CAA protests saw the BJP-led government slap sedition charges on Mr. Gogoi and put him in jail in December 2019. The undercurrent of anger encouraged the KMSS and some 70 associate organisations to launch the Raijor Dal in October 2020 with Mr. Gogoi being its president. The party contested the 2021 Assembly polls in alliance with the Assam Jatiya Parishad, also borne out of the anti-CAA protests, and Mr. Gogoi emerged the front’s only victor, from the Sibsagar constituency. He became the second leader after George Fernandes to win an election from jail.
Assam-based academic Udayon Misra said Mr. Gogoi added a new dimension to the politics of protest in the State. This virtually made him a one-man opposition during the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government and the BJP-led alliance later. He was arrested in June 2012 for instigating violence during a siege of the Assam Secretariat to protest against alleged eviction of locals from the hills around Guwahati. In September 2016, he was arrested again after an eviction drive in Kaziranga National Park turned violent. A decade ago, he said his Marxist belief made him fight for social transformation. He joined the United Revolutionary Movement Council of Assam, a mass organisation of the CPI-Marxist Leninist in the late 1990s but left a couple of years later to join Natun Padatik, an Assamese Marxist journal.
The Congress government charged him for having links with Maoists in 2010, based on a photograph he had allegedly posed in with CPI-Maoist leaders in the Saranda forest of Jharkhand in 2009. The special court of the National Investigation Agency, which acquitted him on July 1, said the photographic evidence was inconclusive. “I may believe in Marxism, but I am definitely not a Maoist the government is desperate to brand me as,” Mr. Gogoi said.
He wants to focus on the development of his Assembly constituency besides spending quality time with college teacher wife Gitashree Tamuly, son and 84-year-old mother Priyada Gogoi, who had campaigned for him during the election.
Mr. Gogoi has also vowed to revive the anti-CAA fight and continue to protest the “pro-dam” and the “communal” agenda of the BJP-led government. Among his goals is ensuring a “BJP-free” Assam by 2026. But Mr. Gogoi insists that he targets political parties based on issues concerning the peasants and marginalised classes, pointing to his call to vote out the Congress from Assam in 2011.
