Bijay Sankar Bora
Tribune News Service
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Disrespect of PM is insult of nation: Sonia Ballia: Launching a blistering attack on the BJP for its oft-repeated description of Dr Manmohan Singh as a weak Prime Minister, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said on Sunday that disrespect of the PM amounted to disrespect of the entire country. “The Prime Minister is a leader of the country and not of a party. So, if one disrespects the Prime Minister, he or she disrespects the entire nation,” Sonia said. |
Guwahati, April 5
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to hit the campaign trail in Assam on April 7 by addressing a Congress election rally in Dibrugarh town under Dibrugarh Parliamentary constituency in eastern Assam.
Though Singh was supposed to address another election rally at Diphu under Autonomous districts constituency covering insurgency-hit hill districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills, Congress spokesman Debo Bora informed that Diphu rally was not in the latest tour programme of the PM. Bora said PM would address only one election rally at Dibrugarh.
Meanwhile, Karbi Anglong-based tribal militant group Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF) has called for a 36-hour Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills district bandh from 5 p.m. on April 6 in order to disrupt electioneering in the insurgency-hit hill districts.
The outfit, in a release, issued “shoot at sight” order to its cadres to kill those who dared to defy the bandh call.
The Congress is trying hard to regain tea tribe-dominated Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency, which it lost to regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in 2004 election. Till then, Dibrugarh was under Congress grip since Independence, thanks to Congress citadel among tea tribe voters. However, in 2004 sitting Congress MP Paban Singh Ghatowar lost to AGP’s Sarbananda Sonowal in a three-corner contest that involved BJP’s Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, a youth leader from tea tribe community.
This time, leading tea tribe leader in Congress and former Union Minister Ghatowar is pitted against sitting MP and common candidate of AGP-BJP, Sonowal, the sitting MP and former leader of influential All-Assam Students’ Union.
