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Gogoi hits back at Naidu, Mahajan

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 22. A day after the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, and the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Pramod Mahajan, attacked the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, at a rally in Guwahati, the Assam Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, today said the offensive showed that the ruling party was "terribly scared" of the prospect of her replacing the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in the near future.

Briefing presspersons here, Mr. Gogoi said the BJP leaders' observations exposed the "intellectual and moral bankruptcy" of the party which had "accidentally attained power at the Centre with the help of innumerable crutches".

Dismissing Ms. Gandhi's foreign origin as a non-issue, he said the BJP was raising it only to divert attention from its own "misrule". He accused the BJP-led NDA Government of being step-motherly towards Assam and the entire north-east and said that neither Mr. Naidu nor Mr. Mahajan referred to the flood situation in the State at the BJP rally. Also, Mr. Gogoi felt that the Centre was not doing enough to tackle the problem of insurgency in the north-east. Differing with the Centre's contention that insurgency was primarily a law and order problem, he stressed the need for a comprehensive package to deal with it.

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