War over happiness indices: Gogoi dares Sarma
By our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, Oct 4: Former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today dared State Fince and P&D Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on the latter’s statement that ‘only 12 per cent people of Assam were happy and the remaining 88 per cent were unhappy during the Congress regime in the State’.
Sarma said this at a function for the release of Assam Human Development Report, 2014 yesterday.
Daring Sarma, Gogoi today said that ‘the figures of happy and unhappy people of the State given by Sarma are misleading’. “He gave a wrong explation of the report. The report says that around 56.4 per cent people in Assam are satisfied with life. This means that more than half of the people in Assam find most of their aspects in life as satisfactory. They were wellbeing during my tenure. Only 24.6 per cent of the population is not satisfied with life whereas 19 per cent is neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” Gogoi said, and added: “Sarma has misled the people of the State”.
The former Chief Minister further said: “I haven’t seen such a politician who resorts to wrong explation of a report in front of a UN representative. What Sarma said yesterday isn’t in the report. If there’s an iota of truth in what Sarma said that ‘88 per cent of people of the State were unhappy during the Congress regime’, how come the Congress garnered 31 per cent of votes in the last Assembly election in the State against 29 per cent garnered by the BJP? The BJP, AGP and the BPF together could garner 41 per cent votes in the last Assembly election.”
Gogoi, however, admitted: “Yes, according to the report, only in Governce 23 per cent of people of the State under the Congress regime were satisfied. I accept it. If I did anything wrong, Himanta Biswa Sarma is also equally responsible. He was my right hand at that time. Corruption is one of the reasons as to why the people of the State were not satisfied with the governce during the Congress regime. However, everybody knows who was corrupt in my government. It is known to all and sundry in the State who has charges in NC Hills scam, Luis Berger scam and Saradha chit fund scam in the State.”
Gogoi said that there should be an open discussion on the report published yesterday. “If my government did anything wrong, that will come out. Besides me, let Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal and Himanta Biswa Sarma take part in the discussion. Out of the eight different domains (aspects) of life satisfaction (or happiness or wellbeing), the percentages of ‘satisfied people’ are much higher than the percentage of ‘not satisfied people’ in seven domains. The only domain or aspect where satisfied percentage is less is Governce domain,” Gogoi said.