Congress to form next government at Centre: Tarun Gogoi

While addressing a press conference held in Guwahati, Gogoi said that, the BJP has lost its grip in major states in the country and it was reflected in the recent elections.

“Congress will win at least 8 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam and the party will form the next government at Centre,” Gogoi said.

The former Assam CM criticised Narendra Modi and alleged that the Prime Minister had violated the model code of conduct in many occasions.

“But the Election Commission of India doesn’t take any action. The Election Commission of India is now a toothless body. Modi has appointed Election Commissioner in such a way so that he will be the loyal to the Prime Minister. He did not appoint an independent person who could take action against anyone. He only appointed the yes man. So that is a tragedy,” Gogoi said.

He also criticised the PM's interview taken by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar.

“It is another drama. In his five years tenure, Modi didn’t attend any press conference,” Gogoi said.

“We never seen that a Bollywood actor had taken interview of a Prime Minister,” the former Assam CM said.

On the other hand, Tarun Gogoi admitted that the Congress party has failed to take the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) issue as an election issue.

“While the BJP had announced that, they will bring the CAB if they come to power again, our party had failed to carry this issue to the grass root level. Even other anti-CAB organisations also failed to carry it to the grass root level and it will definitely impact in the election results,” Gogoi said.

Reacting over the sexual harassment allegations against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, former Assam Chief Minister on Thursday said that, there is a conspiracy.

Gogoi alleged that Prime Minister Modi wants the autonomy to be weakened.

“Today, the image of the SC has gone down. We want it to be thorough inquiry and find out the conspiracy who is behind it,” Gogoi said.

The former Assam CM said that during the tenure of Modi all sort of misdeeds happened in RBI, SC, Election Commission, UGC, CBI, Income Tax ED.

“It's danger for democracy. He (Modi) should be above all, it is his duty to see that the autonomy is maintained. But he is the man who wants that the autonomy to be weakened,” Tarun Gogoi said.

Gogoi said that: “We have to maintain the independence of judiciary. We want thorough inquiry, conspiracy should be thoroughly exposed and conspirator should be punished heavily.”

The three phases of Lok Sabha poll for 14 seats in the state has ended with over 81.52% voter turnout.

(By Hemanta Kumar Nath, Guwahati)