The feud between Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi saw another spike on Sunday, with Sarma alleging that Gogoi had visited Pakistan on the “invitation of the ISI” to “get training”, and Gogoi calling the claims “baseless, ridiculous and nonsense” and likening the CM to a “troll”.
This was the latest in a , accusing the Congress MP and his wife, Elizabeth, of links with the ISI. The CM had also constituted an SIT to probe the “ISI links” in February.
Sarma has repeatedly alleged that Gogoi had visited Pakistan in an unspecified year for 15 days. He has also said that he would make the findings of the SIT public on September 10.
On Sunday, Sarma took this allegation a step further, saying, “He went to Pakistan on the invitation of the ISI. I am saying this for the first time… And he definitely went there to get training. Why else would ISI call him?”
“He had gone to Pakistan on the invitation of the interior ministry and ISI is under the interior ministry. It is equivalent to India’s Home Ministry… If I am invited by the cultural ministry, sports ministry, BCCI, that’s a different thing. If I am invited by the interior ministry of Pakistan and I went there without informing the Government of India, you can imagine that the crimes of people like Jyoti Malhotra are nothing compared to that. If this is not espionage, then what is? And then return and protest against Rafale. Return and ask in the Parliament where security layers have been made on the coastal route. Where India’s nuclear weapons are kept. Who has written and given these questions to you? That is what he learnt at the training programme there,” Sarma claimed.
The latest allegations drew Gogoi’s sharpest response yet, with the MP arguing that Sarma had “raised false allegations” against him “since I stepped foot into politics”.
“You are a Chief Minister. There should be some difference between you and a Rs 500 troll. But whenever we ask for proof, the CM says we have to wait till September… Till date, he has not given any proof… Give the final report in September, but give us some evidence at least about all these allegations that you are making. We also want to know,” Gogoi said.
“He (Sarma) doesn’t want to make it public, and there is a reason for that. The reason is that of all the things that the Chief Minister has been saying so far, 99% of it is false, 99% of it is baseless, ridiculous and nonsense… The kinds of things that a Rs 500 troll spreads on social media, he is saying the same things,” Gogoi told reporters.
Gogoi also accused Sarma of harbouring personal animosity towards him since the start of his political journey and of deliberately “breaking up” his erstwhile Lok Sabha constituency, Kaliabor, in the 2023 delimitation exercise. This led to Gogoi contesting from the Jorhat constituency last year.
“And when the Jorhat Lok Sabha contest happened, you saw how he descended there with all his force. So, for some reason, he is worried about me. For some reason, he has some kind of insecurity. We are seeing some kind of frustration among them… The things he is saying are getting increasingly absurd,” said Gogoi.
