Assam goes to the polls with the Congress in a familiar but uncomfortable position: believing a turnaround is imminent while the evidence points the other way. Two consecutive assembly defeats, a poor Lok Sabha showing, and a string of senior leaders walking out the door – some of them pointing the finger squarely at Gaurav Gogoi.
Gogoi, the Lok Sabha MP from Jorhat and the face of Congress in this election, sat down with Sreenivasan Jain for a wide-ranging, combative conversation that covers it all. Gogoi insists, albeit unconvincingly, that the departures of leaders like Pradyut Bordoloi are not weakening the Congress.
On Congress’s national decline under Rahul Gandhi, Gogoi pivots to the granular picture to assert that the party that everyone is trying to write off is still standing. “The fact that the Congress party still holds a very sizable vote share at the national level speaks to the strength of Rahul Gandhi.” He says this despite the Congress party’s defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
On Himanta Biswa Sarma’s allegations that Gogoi and his wife are Pakistani agents, and that the Congress leader made an unauthorised visit to Rawalpindi, Gogoi flips the script. He accepts that he made a visit to Takshashila without the requisite permissions, and asks “the party which talks about Indian heritage has a problem with me visiting Takshashila?”
On why Congress chose courtrooms over street protests when Assam’s Muslims faced bulldozers, he says, “In many, in most of these cases, we sought legal aid”. However, he struggles to answer why he didn’t personally stand side by side with the embattled Muslims of Assam.
And on what, concretely, the Congress is actually offering Assam beyond the promise of removing fear, Sreenivasan Jain doesn’t let go.
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