In Poll Bound Assam, Left-Linked Kanhaiya Kumar is Congress' 'Poster' Boy

Guwahati: As you drive into Guwahati, you can't miss posters of Kanhaiya Kumar, the students' union president of Jawaharlal University in Delhi who was arrested in February this year on charges of sedition, pasted across the city.

"Are these Acche Din?" reads a poster that has a picture of Mr Kumar, who is also associated with a Left-affiliated student body in Delhi. In poll-bound Assam, this is the ruling Congress' latest campaign strategy - portray the BJP as "anti-students" in a state where students have shaped politics since 1979.

The powerful student body - All Assam Students Union or AASU - successfully led a mass movement against illegal migrants from Bangladesh and forced the Rajiv Gandhi-led government at the Centre to sign the Assam Accord that promised to detect and deport foreigners from the state.

BJP's chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal too emerged out of the anti-foreigners movement of the 80s. Political analysts say this is why the Congress seeks to embarrass him with their latest offensive.

"The way the Congress is trying to make Kanhaiya an electoral plank only shows that it is trying to portray that the BJP doesn't have a strong students force in Assam. I must add that many student leaders have come from AASU and other student organizations and have joined BJP," says Dr Nani Gopal Mahanta, a professor of political science in the Gauhati University.

The Congress -- facing three-term anti-incumbency -- is keen to cash in on the current debate on freedom of expression. "Our main purpose of putting up the posters is to convey that we allow freedom of speech. We allow dissent and anyone can criticise me," Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi told NDTV.

The BJP seems unperturbed and quote statistics to argue it is Assam's youth who have propelled them to prominence.

"Rahul Gandhi or Tarun Gogoi never said sorry for an unfortunate incident where 12,000 answer scripts of class 10 students were burnt. He has never expressed his regret when last year answer scripts were eaten up by the cows,"counters Siddhartha Nath Bhattacharjya, the former BJP chief in Assam.

Of the 25 lakh new members the BJP has enrolled in the past one year, Mr Bhattacharjya argues, majority of them are in the age group of 18 to 40 years of age. "The youth of Assam are with us," he said.