Guwahati, Dec 12 NNN: The anti-talk faction of ULFA headed by Paresh Barua has claimed today that Assam\u2019s cabinet minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was a member of the outlawed outfit one time.
\nThe ULFA in an email statement said Himanta Biswa Sarma who is the health minister in Tarun Gogoi ministry had betrayed the people\u2019s cause by aligning with forces of \u2018colonial India\u2019.
\nReacting sharply to this allegation, Himanta Biswa Sarma dismissed the ULFA\u2019s allegation by saying that why did the outfit take more than 15 years to \u2018expose\u2019 his underground link. Himanta has been in politics for over 15 years now. \u201cI think Paresh Barua (ULFA commander-in-chief) and his boys have lost their mental balance,\u201d he said.
\n Reacting to the ULFA\u2019s threat to target non-locals if the government did not withdraw counter-insurgency operations by armed forces, Sarma on Sunday ridiculed the outfit\u2019s brand of revolution. \u201cIn 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,\u201d he said.
\n \u201cHis (Sarma\u2019s) flippancy, spinelessness and lack of knowledge were the reasons why he had to leave the Ulfa,\u201d said Ulfa publicity secretary Arunodoi Dohotia in an email statement. \u201cBut he and members of his government chose to be subservient to New Delhi unlike West Bengal\u2019s Mamata Banerjee who holds her own despite being with the colonial forces. Her dealing with New Delhi vis-\u00e0-vis Bangladesh is an example,\u201d ULFA said.
\n The allegation of ULFA is purported to be on the basis of two Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Tada) cases against Sarma in 1991.
\nThe cases pertained to alleged collection of extortion money by Sarma on behalf of the Ulfa. The case diaries went \u2018missing\u2019 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. <\/p>\n\n