Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will head the party’s screening committee for the selection of candidates for the upcoming Assam Assembly elections.
Gandhi’s close aide Imran Masood, Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, and Dr Sirivella Prasad are the other three members of the panel.
The Congress high command has also constituted four-member screening committees for Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry to finalise candidate lists for the forthcoming state elections.
Elections to the 126-member Assam Assembly will be held in March–April. The Congress has joined hands with several opposition parties, including the CPI(M), Raijor Dal, Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), CPI, CPI(ML) Liberation, Jatiya Dal–Asom (JDA), and the All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC), to contest the polls.
In the last Assembly elections, the BJP wrested power in the state, winning 64 seats, while its allies—AGP, UPPL, and BPF—secured nine, seven, and three seats respectively.
In the opposition camp, the Congress has 26 MLAs, AIUDF has 15 members, and the CPI(M) has one MLA. There is also one Independent legislator.
On Friday, addressing a mass convention in Dibrugarh, Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi alleged that the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led government was running an authoritarian regime and said the upcoming Assembly elections would be a battle between the people and the “raja” (ruler).
"Democracy is impossible without the right to question. Citizens have the right to know what kind of work the government is doing in the fields of health, education, and infrastructure. But this government does not want to empower the public. Their political ideology bears resemblance to that of old kings. A maharaja is sitting in Delhi, and in every state where they are in power, they have installed a raja," Gogoi said.
