GUWAHATI
The leaders of 15 political parties in Assam met on Thursday to work out a common strategy to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP had won nine of Assam’s 14 parliamentary seats in 2019. Three seats went to Congress, while the Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Front bagged one. An independent won one.
“We met to work out a common minimum programme, which will also be the major poll agenda of the forum of these parties,” Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah said after the meeting in Dibrugarh.
Lurinjyoti Gogoi, the president of the regional Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), said the BJP needs to be defeated to save the State from the family-centric and whimsical government run by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. “What we have today is jungle raj. Nobody is happy with the BJP,” he added.
The 15 parties had earlier formed the United Opposition Forum Assam on the lines of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. They adopted a “charge-sheet” against the BJP during Thursday’s meeting.
Apart from Congress and the AJP, the constituents of the forum are the Akhil Gogoi-led Raijor Dal, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Trinamool Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), CPI, CPI(M), CPI (ML), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)], All India Forward Bloc, All Party Hill Leaders’ Conference, Shiv Sena (UBT), and Jatiya Dal-Asom.
