Guwahati, March 3: Architect of the controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act Abdul Muhib Mazumdar today rejoined the Congress after a long hiatus, but ruled out immediate return to electoral politics.
Mazumdar left the Congress in 1995 following differences with the then chief minister and party president, Hiteswar Saikia. However, the controversial act, which he drafted as law minister in 1983, brought him close to the party again.
Welcoming Mazumdar back into the party, Assam PCC president Paban Singh Ghatowar said, ?He recently appeared before the parliamentary standing committee, headed by Pranab Mukherjee, to defend the IMDT Act as Jamiat spokesman and from that time our relations developed again.?
Ghatowar said the former Congress leader had expressed his desire to rejoin the party but had maintained that he would not contest the elections. ?He told me that he is fed up of electoral politics,? he said.
He added that Mazumdar?s rejoining the party would bolster the Congress? position not only in Assam but in the neighbouring states as well.
The 78-year-old Mazumdar said he had returned to the party to fulfil his father?s wish that he should ?die as a Congressman.? ?I had left the party in a huff. Now I want to end my career as a Congressman,? the emotional lawyer-turned-politician said. Mazumdar also met AICC president Sonia Gandhi before returning to the Congress.
Mazumdar served as advocate-general of Assam from 1981 to 1983 and of Arunachal Pradesh from 1991 to 1996. After resigning from the Congress, he floated his own party, the United People?s Party of Assam in 1995.