Guwahati, Jan 9 : The ruling Congress today pressed the panic button with a dozen influential organisations, representing the tea community, floating a political party ahead of Lok Sabha elections.
The party’s tea cell, which looks after the affairs of the community within the PCC, today decided to have a “counter meeting” with the tea organisations and intellectuals for their opinion on how best the party could “serve the interests” of the community.
The meeting will be held ahead of the scheduled meeting of the 12 organisations on January 30, where they are expected to christen the nascent political party.
“Immediately after Bihu (that falls on January 14) we will sit with the various organisations and intellectuals from the community to take their views as to how to solve the problems confronting the community,” said the chairman of the tea cell, Bhagirat Karan, here today.
The 12 organisations formed the outfit at Biswanath Chariali Natya Mandir in Sonitpur district on January 4, at a convention organised by the Adivasi Mahasabha and backed by the All Adivasi Students Association of Assam.
An interim president, Joseph Kandulna of Tezpur will head the party, with Asaf Chandiguria of Lakhimpur as secretary.
While Kandulna is a college principal, Chandiguria is a retired college principal.
The party will make its electoral debut in the coming Lok Sabha elections, contesting one seat. More than the number of seats, which the new party will contest, the Congress is worried about the long-term erosion it would cause to its support base among the tea community.
“At the proposed meeting, we will tell the organisations and intellectuals that the problems of the community will not be solved by merely floating a new party. It is time when we should jointly fight for our cause,” Karan said.
“There is no denying the fact that the community has genuine grievances. But at the same time it is also true that the Congress is trying its best to address these. Only recently the tea tribe development department launched a scheme for the overall development of the community,” Karan said.
He said the cell would try to convince the leaders of the organisations about the sincerity of the party to even accord the Scheduled Tribe status to the community.
“If need be, we can launch a joint agitation to pressurise the Centre to grant ST status to the community,” the Congress leader said.
The leaders of the tea organisations, however, said any effort to dissuade them from floating the party at this juncture by holding out sops would be a classic case of “too little too late”.