Guwahati, Dec 12 NNN: The anti-talk faction of ULFA headed by Paresh Barua has claimed today that Assam’s cabinet minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was a member of the outlawed outfit one time.
The ULFA in an email statement said Himanta Biswa Sarma who is the health minister in Tarun Gogoi ministry had betrayed the people’s cause by aligning with forces of ‘colonial India’.
Reacting sharply to this allegation, Himanta Biswa Sarma dismissed the ULFA’s allegation by saying that why did the outfit take more than 15 years to ‘expose’ his underground link. Himanta has been in politics for over 15 years now. “I think Paresh Barua (ULFA commander-in-chief) and his boys have lost their mental balance,” he said.
Reacting to the ULFA’s threat to target non-locals if the government did not withdraw counter-insurgency operations by armed forces, Sarma on Sunday ridiculed the outfit’s brand of revolution. “In an age when the press of a button can wipe out three-four countries at a time, they show their strength by planting bombs under rickshaws and railway tracks,” he said.
“His (Sarma’s) flippancy, spinelessness and lack of knowledge were the reasons why he had to leave the Ulfa,” said Ulfa publicity secretary Arunodoi Dohotia in an email statement. “But he and members of his government chose to be subservient to New Delhi unlike West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee who holds her own despite being with the colonial forces. Her dealing with New Delhi vis-à-vis Bangladesh is an example,” ULFA said.
The allegation of ULFA is purported to be on the basis of two Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Tada) cases against Sarma in 1991.
The cases pertained to alleged collection of extortion money by Sarma on behalf of the Ulfa. The case diaries went ‘missing’ later on prompting the Gauhati High Court in August 2009 to order the government to furnish details about the cases. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said in Juky last year that he would order a CID probe into the missing Tada case diaries after RTI activist Akhil Gogoi claimed to have recovered the missing case diaries.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/ulfa-claims-minister-worked-for-it/
