Former union minister Rajen Gohain, 17 others resign from BJP

Dibrugarh/Guwahati, Oct 9 (PTI) Former Union minister and four-time BJP MP Rajen Gohain from Assam’s Nagaon parliamentary constituency resigned from the party along with 17 other members on Thursday, officials said.

In a letter to state BJP president Dilip Saikia, Gohain said he was resigning from the primary membership of the party and stepping down from all party positions with immediate effect.

Seventeen other BJP members, mostly from Upper and Central Assam, also submitted their resignations to Saikia, sources said.

Speaking to PTI, Gohain said he resigned as the party had failed "to fulfil the promises made to the people of Assam and betrayed the indigenous communities by allowing outsiders to settle in the state." He also charged the party's state leadership with "encouraging communal politics and dividing the centuries-old Assamese society".

The BJP state president termed Gohain's resignation unfortunate and said he should have expressed his grievances within the party platform instead of quitting.

Gohain represented the Nagaon parliamentary constituency for four terms from 1999 to 2019 and had served as the Union minister of state for railways from 2016 to 2019.

Gohain submitted his letter at the party headquarters in Guwahati.

The state president, along with senior office bearers, are at Dibrugarh to attend BJP's central committee and office bearers meeting during the day.

Saikia later told reporters that it was ''unfortunate'' that he resigned from the party as, during the last three decades, ''the party had given him a lot and so did he''.

''We are sad; he should not have resigned,'' he said.

Saikia said that the former MP was expressing his desire to resign from the party for a long time but ''we had hoped that as he was associated with the party for a long time, he will change his decision but he did not''.

The state president pointed out that there are many senior members who had joined the party before him and, ''leave alone becoming an MP, they have not even become a ward member''.

Gohain's reasons for resigning from the party is ''entirely personal and as a senior member of the party, he should have taken the initiative to remove any dissatisfaction or disappointment among the members, but he did the opposite'', he said.

''It was his responsibility to give strong leadership to the party and as a senior member, if there was any issue, he should have expressed it within the party platform instead of resigning,'' Saikia said.

The party will, however, analyse the various issues raised by him, he added.

Gohain, 74, said that he was disillusioned with the party as it had betrayed its core assurances to the indigenous communities.

"The current BJP leadership in the state allowed outsiders to settle at the expense of the indigenous Assamese people's land and resources," he claimed.

He criticised the government's approach to the contentious issue of illegal immigration, a central plank of the BJP's earlier campaigns.

"The government, which promised that after May 16, 2014, there would not be a single Bangladeshi in Assam, is continuously bringing in Bangladeshis through new tactics," he alleged.

He further said that not granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to six indigenous communities of the state was a major point of contention.

The former minister alleged that a key reason for quitting the party was that the present leadership had sidelined its dedicated grassroots workers and did not give due respect to the dedicated workers who sacrificed their youth to advance the party, even after the government was formed in the state in 2016.

He accused the state government of promoting "nepotism" and implementing policies that crush local enterprise by imposing new rules regularly that squeeze the livelihoods of local small businessmen and handing over those opportunities to large outsider business groups.

Assembly elections are due in the state next year. PTI COR DG MNB DG NN