Asom minister denies link with ULFA

Guwahati, May 29: Asom Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma today denied having any links with the banned ULFA and declared to resign from public life if proven otherwise.

His reaction came a day after a group of lawmakers, led by some BJP MPs, demanded Centre's intervention to restore normalcy in Asom and singling out the health minister for his alleged links with the ULFA.

At a news conference, Dr Sharma displayed copies of the High Court judgement saying that he had been repeatedly facing these allegations since 1993 and every time he was relieved of the charges by the Apex Court, Gauhati High Court and district level courts.

The MPs had dashed off a memorandum to President A P J Abdul Kalam seeking immediate inquiry by the Supreme Court as to how a writ petition of Gauhati High Court remained unlisted for five years besides, ordering a CBI inquiry into the "misuse and manipulation" of police and the judicial system by Dr Sharma.

Addressing a joint press conference yesterday at New Delhi, BJP MPs Sukhdev Paswan, Nikhil Choudhury, Khiren Rijiju and Uday Singh, produced some papers, including old police records, copies of a meeting of a State Level Review Committee held on May 8 1997, which reviewed the case against Dr Sharma, besides news reports to buttress their claim.

Dr Sharma today announced that he would file 23 defamation cases against all these MPs separately in 23 districts of Asom.

He further said that these MPs with no connection with Asom, were insulting Gauhati High Court and the legal process.

The MPs also submitted a 10-point charter of demands and wanted the chief minister to come clean on the State Health Minister's 'nexus' with the ULFA.

''Let Himanta and his leader Tarun Gogoi say whether he was arrested for extortion at gun-point and caught red-handed by police or not,'' the MPs demanded.

The MPs further demanded that Army and Central intelligence reports be made public and a CBI inquiry instituted to ascertain whether SHarma was funding ULFA or not.

Dr Sharma in his reply said it was he who had moved the High Court seeking an end to the charges in 2003. Gauhati High Court exonerated him but after that another PIL was filed by one Bhuban Gogoi at the Apex Court with the same charges.

''After being cleared by every court, these allegations are now nothing but politicised accusations,'' he maintained.

UNI