GUWAHATI: The Paresh Baruah faction of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) on Saturday warned the BJP not to field a former member of the insurgent group, Bhaskar Sarma, in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.
Enraged that the BJP is fielding a person who was allegedly involved in the “secret killings” of the relatives of its members, the outfit in an email statement to the media said the memories of the gory and mindless killings were still fresh in the minds of the people. “The people of Assam cannot be shamed by allowing a traitor to become a public leader. The ULFA will go to any extent if he is fielded by any party,” the outfit warned. The threat came within days after the BJP had purportedly shortlisted Sarma’s name as its candidate for Margherita constituency in eastern Assam. Earlier, the local BJP workers vented their ire against the party’s shortlisting Sarma’s name by staging protests.
The “secret killings” by the masked men had taken place between 1998 and 2001 when Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) under Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was in power in the state for the second time. Raking up the episode, CM Tarun Gogoi on Thursday accused the then NDA government of conniving with the Mahanta government in the killings. He reminded that the killings of innocent people had taken place when Mahanta was in power.