Guwahati: Opposition Asom Gana Parishad on Monday hinted at an alliance with BJP, while dismissing allegations by Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi that it had links with the banned ULFA.
"We have decided not to field candidates against BJP Assam unit president Ranjit Dutta and we are open to any post-poll arrangement," AGP President Chandra Mohan Patowary told reporters here ahead of the Assam Assembly elections, starting April 4, 2011.
Dismissing Gogoi's charge of his party's link with ULFA, he said it was "clear to all" that the ruling Congress had "taken the outfit's help in the last Assembly poll."
"People know that Congress had taken ULFA militants help in the last Assembly election and it will be the same this time," he said.
Patowary also rejected the often repeated allegations by Gogoi and the Congress about secret killings of ULFA kin during the erstwhile Prafulla Mahanta-lead AGP regime.
"During the last ten years there has been open killings of civilians by militants and the government has remained a silent spectator," he said.
AGP, he said, would take on Congress for its "misrule" and bad governance.
"People are fed up with tall claims of the Congress government on the development front and large scale corruption and bad governance will result in their defeat.
"The per capita income is the lowest in Assam but Congress is busy advertising in newspapers functions for foundation stone laying in 450 so-called development projects in the last 50 days," Patowary said.
He said dissension in Congress had come to the fore with the resignation of senior members like former Chief Minister Anowara Taimur. "There are allegations that candidates (in Congress) have been selected on payment of huge sums of money."
The AGP president also criticised Congress' Assam election in-charge and AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, saying he had "very little knowledge" about the north-eastern state.
More than 1000 Congress workers in lower Assam would join AGP on Tuesday, he claimed.
On the use of electronic voting machines, Patowary said he was against it.
"We had complained to the Chief Election Commissioner during his visit here that the EVMs could be tampered by the ruling party (Congress).
"In the past we have seen that EVMs are not a fool-proof measure for free and fair election and so we have urged the EC to resort to the old method of ballot boxes .
Even developed countries as the USA, Germany and France are still using ballot boxes, so why not in our country ?", he added.
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