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COVER STORY: ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2001
Assam
Fear Is The Key
The ULFA is on a deadly mission to stop the AGP-BJP from
winning. This will have a bearing on the results.
By Wasbir Hussain
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| ARMED STRUGGLE: Mahanta, Advani and candidate Ramen
Deka at a rally |
It's May Day. A
blue Tata Sumo drives to the BJP's campaign headquarters in Dibrugarh
town shortly after 8.30 p.m. The congested locality turns pitch dark as
the power goes off, only to return five crucial minutes later. Jayanta
Dutta, the local BJP candidate and general secretary of the party's Assam
unit, alights from the vehicle, followed by two of his campaign managers,
Biren Phukan and Prasanta Gogoi. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose. The
three are greeted by a volley of shots fired by some militants waiting
with 9-mm pistols. The trio are rushed to the Assam Medical College &
Hospital nearby, but are declared "brought dead". Seven others,
three police guards and four bystanders, sustain bullet wounds.
Less than half an hour later, the Asom Gana
Parishad (AGP) office, about 2 km away, comes under attack from the rebels.
An AGP worker and a police constable are killed. The assailants walk away
unchallenged. On April 29, rebels had launched a grenade attack on Kumar
Deepak Das, AGP candidate for the Barpeta seat in western Assam, as he
was descending from the dais after addressing an election meeting. Das
sustained serious injuries. The previous day an AGP campaign office in
Guwahati, 500 m from Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta's heavily fortified
official residence, had been attacked. One party worker died and 14 others
were hurt.
The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom
(ULFA) has struck back with a vengeance. There is panic and confusion
in the ruling AGP camp, as also in that of their new ally, the BJP. The
ULFA is an avowed non-believer in the Indian Constitution-polls included.
Ever since its formation in 1979, the outfit has been fighting for a "sovereign,
socialist Assam" and its shadow always looms large during elections
in the state. This time is no exception. It has declared its opposition
to the May 10 elections to Assam's 126-member Assembly.
"Another election has been forced on us
... Our people's right to self-determination has been taken away,"
ULFA Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa told cadres at a base in Bhutan on April
7, the organisation's 22nd foundation day. Rajkhowa, 49, was more direct
when he told India Today, "We will try to resist any function or
programme for occupation by India in Assam. The coming assembly election
will not be defined otherwise." Nobody was surprised, therefore,
when elusive ULFA rebels stepped up their offensive. Between April 4 and
May 2 as many as 34 people were killed and 129 injured in election-related
violence.
The ULFA had called for a poll boycott during
the 1999 Lok Sabha elections in the state but it went largely unheeded.
The turnout was as high as 70 per cent. This time the outfit has not made
any appeal but has taken on the AGP-BJP combine directly.
Campaigning in Assam last fortnight, Union Home
Minister L.K. Advani talked of a four-point ULFA plan involving extortion,
killing and kidnapping of AGP and BJP candidates as well as police and
paramilitary officials, and undertakings from the opposition Congress
that it would not obstruct its activities should that party win. Earlier,
Mahanta alleged a pact between the Congress and the ULFA to rig the polls.
The Congress, of course, refuted the charges. Said Assam Congress heavyweight
and Lok Sabha member Paban Singh Ghatowar: "If the authorities have
any evidence of a Congress-ULFA nexus, action should be initiated against
the guilty member." The AGP has been harping on the nexus for almost
a year now. Last year, Mahanta even submitted a formal memorandum to Advani,
accusing the Congress and party's state President Tarun Gogoi of having
links with the ULFA. The Ministry of Home Affairs initiated a probe but
has failed to come up with evidence. This has not prevented AGP and BJP
leaders from attacking the Congress. "Selective attacks by the ULFA
on the AGP and BJP have proved which party the group sympathises with,"
says Mahanta, who survived an ULFA bomb attack in 1997.
The reasons for the ULFA's anger against the
AGP are not far to seek. In September 1997, less than a year after he
assumed office, Mahanta gave the go-ahead for a coordinated offensive
against the ULFA by the police, paramilitary and the army. More than 500
ULFA activists have been killed and 2,700 have surrendered since then.
These reverses inflicted a huge psychological blow to the organisation,
which hastily claimed the surrenders were stage-managed. "The ULFA
has ceased to be the cohesive force it once was due to the sustained counter-insurgency
offensive," says an army officer.
The underground organisation waited for the
elections to hit back. The ULFA hopes the AGP's defeat will bring a change
in policies on dealing with insurgency. The attacks in the past few weeks
have shown the rebels mean business. Security officials have drawn up
a list of 150 highly vulnerable candidates, 138 of whom belong to the
AGP and the BJP. Just how much terror the ULFA and its tribal ally, the
National Democratic Front of Bodoland, have been able to create on poll
eve is indicated by the security measures being taken. On April 30, the
deployment on the ground was 227 paramilitary companies (a company comprise
about 100 men) and 140 army columns (80-100 soldiers per column). On May
2, the authorities announced that 25 additional paramilitary companies
were moving in. The threat perception has quite clearly changed.
For the Unified Command in Assam, protecting
candidates is a big challenge. The politicians themselves are not too
worried. It is time to score points. Advani knows only too well that the
people of Assam want peace. Which is why he brought up the subject of
the ULFA's four-point plan. He may, for all intent and purposes, have
been trying to pin down the Congress, accusing it of aiding and abetting
terrorism by maintaining links with the ULFA. Whether the home minister's
move proves counter-productive is yet to be seen but the Congress has
decided to hit back. "The AGP-BJP leadership has realised that our
party is clearly on a comeback trail," says Ambika Soni, AICC general
secretary. "Accusing the Congress of having a nexus with the ULFA
is a sign of frustration on their part."
The Election Commission, too, has drawn flak.
"We repeatedly told the EC that the polls should be held in three
phases so that security forces could be properly deployed to prevent the
rebels from taking the upper hand," says Mahanta. "But they
threw our proposal into the waste basket." Criticising the EC is
probably a ploy to win that extra vote. After all in politics, winning
sympathy is often a matter of life-or death.
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