GSS call to candidates to clarify stand

GUWAHATI, April 24: The Grahak Suraksha Sanstha (GSS) has called upon parties and candidates contesting the ensuing elections to the Assam Legislative Assembly (ALA) to unequivocally state their positions and declare their policies with regard to the various burning problems of the common people and has further urged the voters to unsparingly question and cross-examine the candidates during the election campaign. In a release to the press, GSS president Deven Dutta and secretary Olee Nath have said that parties and candidates, stuck up to their necks in the uagmire of squabbles and fisticuffs ever nominations for election to the Assam Legislative Assembly, who are maintaining a loud studied silence over the incidents along the Assam-Bangladesh border for fear of losing votes of Bangladeshis and their cohorts, are also similarly keeping mum over the burning day-to-day problems of the people and distancing themselves from the same, thereby deriving self-deceptive satisfaction of doing so-called politics. They urged all the parties and candidates to clarify their stands on vital public issues like spiralling prices of essential commodities, impact of goonda tax and police extortions in markets and on highways on prices of vegetables, fish, eggs, fruits etc, the widespread blackmarket of blue-dyed PDS kerosene, blackmarketing of and anomalies in supply of cooking gas; failure of the ASEB in regular supply of power, unbelievable, inexcusable delay in completion of Karbi Langpi Hydel Power Project large-scale power theft, claim of load security from old consumers at new rates; planned, systematic destruction of the ASTC; unauthorized, hikes in fares of private buses; utter lawlessness and escapades of owners drivers etc of autorickshaws, night buses, city buses and the gigantic fraud and hoax called tourist buses; uttar failure of municipal bodies in supply of water and services like roads, footpaths, drains, street lights; widespread production and use of ply thene bags, detrimental to environment and public health; construction of shrines and temples on public roads and pavements and eviction of all encroachers from all public places. Asserting that the so-called politics, played by wriggling out like eels from the real problems of the people is no politics, and calling upon the parties and candidates to give up such petty politicking centring round acquisition of power for nothing, and to engage themselves in honest, purposeful politics, aimed at public welfare and solution of people's problems, Dutta and Nath have further appealed to the voters to confront the candidates with questions and ceaselessly cross-examine them on these problems during the election campaign.