Bid to defame minister by raids: Assam Congress

Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi here on Thursday alleged that house of his agriculture minister Rockybul Hussain was raided by expenditure observer of the Election Commission to tarnish his image just before the polling.

Pointing out that the behaviour of the observers raise many doubts, Mr Gogoi told reporters, “Mr Hussain is the senior minority leader of the party and such raids in which nothing was recovered was merely aimed at to damage his image before the elections.”

Mr Gogoi said, “If a Cabinet minister has to face such harassment, you can imagine what kind of problem a common man will have to face during BJP regime.”

In an obvious attempt to give a political connotation to the raid of the election observer at the residence of Mr Hussain on Wednesday night, Mr Gogoi said, “The party is solidly behind Mr Hussain and will fight out such political conspiracy of the BJP.”

Meanwhile, Assam agriculture minister Rockybul Hussain on Wednesday filed a police complaint against an expenditure observer of the EC for defaming him by searching his vehicle and house.

Mr Hussain said that he, along with his wife, had come to his house in Panjabari area here at around 6.30 pm when the EC team, which was waiting there, asked them along with Mr Hussain’s security forces in another car to get out of their vehicles to conduct a search operations. The team did not explain the exact reason for conducting the search, the minister said. “A person of the team told me ‘there is a reason’ for doing so. The team came in a car with a sticker of ‘expenditure observer on election duty Kamrup metropolitan district’.”

Mr Hussain said, “After the search was over, the officer who claimed to be from Gujarat cadre, told me ‘I am satisfied’ but refused to give me a report that the search was conducted.”

“The search is a political conspiracy as the BJP is afraid that the Congress will win the Assembly elections again,” he told reporters.

“As soon as the election expenditure’s team left, my house was raided by an income-tax team. We have never seen I-T raids being conducted in the night but only in the daytime,” the minister claimed, adding that it was an after thought to cover up the raids of election observers, which failed to get anything from him.