GUWAHATI: Former member of Parliament (MP) and Union minister Rajen Gohain, who quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last month, has joined the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) on Wednesday ahead of next year’s assembly polls in the state.
Gohain, who was the president of the BJP in Assam and had won four Lok Sabha polls from Nagaon seat for the party, had resigned from the saffron party on October 9 along with 17 others.
The AJP came into being in September 2020 following the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests that rocked Assam in December 2019 that claimed five lives in police action. Two parties were formed by prominent leaders who led the protests ahead of the assembly polls in 2021. Besides the AJP, the other outfit was Raijor Dal (RD). While the RD managed to win one seat in the Assembly, the AJP failed to win any. The AJP is headed by Lurinjyoti Gogoi, former general secretary of All Assam Students Union (AASU), the state’s premier student body.
“This is a big development in Assam. Gohain’s entry to our party has strengthened us ahead of the elections and it has opened the floodgates for others disgruntled with the ruling BJP to join us,” said AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi.
{{/usCountry}}“This is a big development in Assam. Gohain’s entry to our party has strengthened us ahead of the elections and it has opened the floodgates for others disgruntled with the ruling BJP to join us,” said AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi.
{{/usCountry}}He indicated that talks are underway with several senior leaders in different parties and in coming weeks and months more prominent figures would join the AJP prior to the assembly polls.
While submitting his resignation from the BJP last month, Gohain had said that he was upset at the party’s state leadership and its alleged “betrayal of Assam’s indigenous communities”. He also questioned the delimitation of assembly and parliamentary seats in the state done last year, saying that the process was flawed.
Gohain, who joined the party in 1991 and had represented the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat four consecutive times between 1999 and 2019, was Union minister between 2016 and 2019.
The 74-year-old leader had earlier expressed reservations about new faces in the party getting more prominence at the cost of senior leaders from the state and had even apprised this to the high command including Union home minister Amit Shah.