Two Assam-based civil society organisations on Tuesday appealed to voters to “think before you vote” in the Lok Sabha polls to be held in the state on April 19, 26 and May 7.
The appeal, issued jointly by the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, Assam and Axom Nagarik Samaj, has listed 16 issues linked to employment, health, institutional independence, education, the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), corruption, flood and erosion and old pension policy for the voters to “think” about.
Functioning from Guwahati, the two CSOs said they are backing the Opposition INDIA bloc and working to “save” the Constitution and democratic values, and on issues related to Assam.
The appeal, circulated on behalf of the CSOs by Paresh Malakar, Deepak Goswami, Sankar Saikia and Santanu Borthakur, starts with the following lines, “Let’s think about it. We have the 2024 general elections ahead of us. Where should a government focus — good governance, public welfare or building temples? Shouldn’t we think about the following (16 issues) when we go to vote? Shouldn’t we cast our votes against these things?”
Assam has 14 parliamentary seats, nine of which are held by the ruling BJP and three by the Opposition Congress. A BJP-led government has been in power at the Centre since 2014 and in Assam since 2016.
On employment, the CSOs said the situation for job-seekers was the “worst” in the last 40 years. “Assam is also in a similar situation. Government jobs are getting exhausted. The government is trying to show off by advertising for job vacancies on the one hand but also is winding up several departments on the other. Instead of providing 1,00,000 jobs every year, the government has provided jobs to only 1,44,227 people from 2014 to 2024. The number of unemployed youths in the state is now more than 20 lakhs,” the appeal said.
According to the Economic Survey of Assam for 2023-14 tabled in the Assembly in February, close to 10 lakh educated youth registered with the employment exchange in 2022 compared to 1.14 in 2021. The number of registered job-seekers in Assam stood at 18,05,441 in 2021.
The CSOs said the Assam government was doing a “good thing” by setting up one medical college and hospital after another, “most of them do not have doctors and medical facilities and for a minor ailment people have to run to private hospitals in Guwahati”.
Drawing attention to the education sector, the CSOs claimed “more than 7,000 government schools have been closed so far” in Assam and their “condition so bad that even poor people try their best to send their children to private schools”.
According to official figures, more than 8,066 elementary schools have either been shut down or merged with nearby schools in the past seven years in Assam.
The CSOs have claimed inflation has “crossed all limits under this government”, the plight of small businesses after demonetisation and COVID and people “almost giving up agriculture” because the government has “no interest in agriculture”.
“This year’s budget is only Rs 16 crore for irrigation, but Rs 25 crore for Ayodhya darshan,” the appeal said.
It also claimed corruption of low-level employees “gets prominent coverage in the newspapers” but when corrupt leaders join the BJP “they are warmly welcomed”.
