New Delhi: Nearly two weeks after Assam cabinet minister Sanjoy Kishan had issued an apology to Paresh Baruah, supremo of banned armed group, the United Liberation Front of Asom – Independent (ULFA-I), for calling him a ‘liar’ at a public event, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has issued a show-cause notice to Kishan to explain himself.
The ULFA was banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1990. Subsequently, the outfit broke into two factions, with one continuing to engage with the Union government for peace talks since early 2000 and the Baruah faction – the ULFA-I – opposed to it until the issue of Assam’s sovereignty was put on the discussion table.
Baruah is widely believed to be residing somewhere along the Myanmar-China border.
According to news reports from the state, Kishan, the Tea Tribe and Employment minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Assam government, took part at a ‘Gunatsov’ programme of the state education ministry in the Nagaon district on May 13. When a reporter asked Kishan about the ULFA-I killing two youths for allegedly being police informants, and another youth, Bijoy Gogoi, declared to have died by suicide, Kishan had called Baruah a “liar”.
On May 16, top ULFA-I functionary Arunudoy Asom sent emails to some news organisations in the state demanding Kishan’s apology within 24 hours and threatening to boycott the BJP leader from the Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts in upper Assam if the apology was not issued. Kishan hails from the tea belt in that very region.
Within hours, Kishan held a press meet in Tinsukia and publicly apologised to Baruah.
“Our chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is trying to create an atmosphere to bring ULFA-I to the negotiating table to establish peace in Assam. And I don’t want that atmosphere to be disturbed. I just talked about some youths joining ULFA and if my comment hit the sentiment of Paresh Baruah in any way, I seek apology for that,” the BJP minister was quoted as saying.
On May 28, Sarma’s office sent a show cause notice to the minister to explain why he chose to tender an apology to the head of a banned outfit.
Reacting to the May 28 action of the government, the opposition have demanded that Kishan be dropped from the ministry as he had gone against the constitution, on which he took an oath.
This week, the chief minister has been facing the opposition’s ire after a joint report by The Wire and The Cross Current has shown that while he had told the media in 2020 that the state health department, which he then headed, had imported 50,000 personal protective equipment (PPE) kits from China, a reply to a request under the Right to Information (RTI) Act from the department categorically stated that it had not.
Sarma was reported to have received the consignment from Guwahati airport in 2020 along with another BJP minister, Piyush Hazarika, who was seen as being close to him. Sarma had been widely lauded across national and state media then.