Mahanta, Gogoi locked in row over who has links with ULFA

Guwahati, Aug 11: Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Tarun Gogoi are locked in a n...

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Guwahati, Aug 11: Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Tarun Gogoi are locked in a new interesting war of words over the issue of who had links with the ULFA.

It all began with Mahanta telling a New Delhi newspaper that he had ‘definite’ information that the senior Congress leader had close links with the ULFA and was keeping constant telephonic contact with its leaders.

While that allegation of Mahanta appeared last week, Gogoi, who rushed to Guwahati this week from Delhi (Gogoi is a member of the Lok Sabha) and announced that he was going to court with a defamation suit against the chief minister.

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Gogoi told a press conference here on Wednesday that he was going to file a Rs one crore damage suit against Mahanta for the latter’s allegedly nefarious design to malign his public image.

The Congress president not only refuted charges that he had any contact ever with ULFA leaders, but also demanded a high-level judicial inquiry into the allegations. He also alleged in return that it were some Cabinet colleagues of Mahanta who had links with the militants and that the chief minister had failed to take action against them.

Reacting to Gogoi’s counter-allegations, chief minister Mahanta has now come out with a statement that he welcomed the former’s intention to go to court, as also the demand for institution of a judicial probe.

This would provide a ‘good opportunity’ to the state government to establish the judiciary that Gogoi was maintaining links with the ULFA militants, chief minister Mahanta has said.

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The chief minister also said that his government had impeccable evidences about the state Congress president’s close links with the ULFA and that he also had regular parleys with the ULFA leaders. Those would be produced in the court when Gogoi files the defamation case, Mahanta added.

This incidentally is not the first time that chief minister Mahanta has alleged that Gogoi had links with the ULFA. In 1997, when the Tata Tea-ULFA controversy was at its peak, Mahanta had even stated that Gogoi’s telephone in his Guwahati residence was being used by Tata Tea executive Brojen Gogoi to keep contacts with the ULFA. Brojen Gogoi (who is not related to Tarun Gogoi, but was his tenant), was arrested along with several other senior Tata Tea officials in 1997 for holding parleys with the ULFA leaders in a Bangkok hotel.