Minority groups to chalk poll strategy

GUWAHATI, April 6: The minority organisations of the State will meet in a crucial meeting at the National Education Foundation, Bora Service here tomorrow to chalk out their action plan in relation to the coming Assembly election in the State. According to H R A Choudhury, chief convenor of the Co-ordination Committee of Minority' Organisations, Assam, the meeting will discuss three options of either going alone in the coming election by the minority' organisations, or entering into an understanding with either of the Congress or any other like-minded secular democratic parties. But, in case of an understanding with the Congress, the proposal for that should come from the Congress, Choudhury said, referring to the parties he is having with the minority organisations nowadays. Choudhury is also the president of the UMF. What ever may be the decisions of the participants of the meeting, who will also include minority' leaders in various political parties like the Congress and the AGP, it is expected that the minority' organisations will accept them as binding on them, Choudhury said. It is worthmentioning here that with the recent unification of the four major groups of the All Assam Minority' Students' Union (AMSU), the minority organisations, which got a jolt recently with the AGP opting for an alliance with the BJP, got a shot in their arm and have started hectic parleying with one another. Earlier, efforts were on to enter into electoral understanding with the AGP, particularly by the UMF. Meanwhile the UMF and the Samajwadi Party of the State have entered into an electoral understanding and decided to field jointly 38 candidates. But, this evening the Assam Institute of Minority and Ethnic Studies (AIMES) in a press release faxed to the newspaper houses, warned against any move to include the State unit of the Samajwadi Party within the fold of the ongoing move to unite the minority' organisations of the State. For, the AIMES said, State president of the Samajwadi Party Abdul Muhib Mazumdar has a dubious political standing, a communal background and link with the BJP.