Golam Osmani to join Cong

GUWAHATI, August 22: It is the return of the estranged son. Golam Osmani has decided to join the Congress once again. He returned as a Janata Party nominee to the Assam Assembly in 1978 from the then Cachar district riding the cradle of the anti-Congress wave which swept the entire country following the 1975 Emergency. Abul Fazal Golam Osmani, however, could not relish power for long as a Cabinet minister in the Golap Barbora ministry which fell following a massive desertion by the party MLAs to the Congress (J)-backed Assam Janata Dal led by late Jogen Hazarika. Osmani again became a Cabinet minister in the Anowara Taimur-led Congress(I) ministry following the fall of the Jogen Hazarika ministry. But soon after the signing of the Assam Accord, Golam Osmani found some new dimensions and tried to pose himself as the messiah of the minorities and became the founder secretary general of the United Minorities' Front (UMF) raising the bogey of attacks on the rights of minorities in the state. He was elected to the Assembly as a UMF leader but was soon allegedly found hobnobbing with the "perpetrators of attacks on the minorities" - the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). Osmani was successful in securing Congress support to get himself returned from the Barpeta parliamentary seat last time as a UMF nominee.