Assam: Gaurav Gogoi announces campaign to complement Bihar’s Voter Adhikar Yatra

On Sunday, 24 August, Assam Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi announced a statewide 'Vote Chor Gaddi Chhod [Vote thieves must give up their seats]' campaign to complement the "historic" Rahul Gandhi-led Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar.

The campaign, by way of a series of awareness meetings from 24 to 31 August, will look to "strengthen the fight for people’s rights and hold accountable those who betray the democratic mandate", with MPs, MLAs, "senior leaders and master trainers" reaching out right to the grassroots to mobilise public opinion, Gogoi announced in an X post.

The campaign began with, among other plans, a BLA (booth-level agent) training camp in Dhemaji led by Gogoi himself.

The Assam Congress shared the list of further meetings on its handle as well, covering all the districts.f

This comes against at a time when Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma seems especially disturbed by recent journalistic coverage of ground realities in the state as well as the criticism from both media and civil rights activists.

Yesterday, a spat — to put it politely — ensued between the CM and advocate Prashant Bhushan, one of several well-regarded names visiting Assam at this time.

Himanta Biswa Sarma effectively accused the likes of Bhushan, former Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar, activist Harsh Mander, former chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities Wajahat Habibullah and Muslim civil rights activist and writer Fawaz Shaheen of being in the state hand-in-glove with the Congress and Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind to 'weaken the state' with 'elements from Pakistan and Bangladesh'.

Prashant Bhushan, however, said, "A complete loot is going in the state and the chief minister wants to hide this. Therefore, he wants to prevent independent people." The reference was to a recent case that had the Gauhati High Court exclaiming a "whole district" is being handed over by the government to private companies — in violation of Sixth Schedule tribal land rights.

As for the campaign against 'Vote chori', the BLA training and sensitisation follows a Supreme Court direction that seems to place the onus of safeguarding voters' rights at the booth level on the local political parties' representatives.