Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on the fifth session of The Conclave 2023 asserted that just as the media houses in Assam are not influenced by the ruling party, accusing the BJP of controlling the national media houses are baseless.
This comes after Congress MP Rahul Gandhi during a session on day two with the Director of Pratidin Media Network, Rishi Baruah at ‘The Conclave 2023’ held at The Ashok in New Delhi accused the BJP for controlling the media.
The chief minister also mentioned that he has right to set narrative as an individual and no one can control him from speaking or tweeting anything.
Speaking to the Consulting Editor of Pratidin Time, Mrinal Talukdar at an interview session on The Conclave, CM Sarma said, “Censorship in the media was introduced in Assam during the reign of Congress during the emergency period. But while even scrapping section 377 from Jammu & Kashmir, BJP did nothing as such.”
He also stated that regional media has been writing against him on a number of occasions, but, as chief minister of the ruling party BJP he had never tried to control the media.
“I enjoy when media writes against me. I symbolize BJP’s policies in Assam. We allow all media houses to write. Similarly, what I do here in Assam, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan also do the same thing. We are not repeating 1975,” added CM Sarma.
When asked about recent Ramesh Bidhuri’s remark inside the Parliament, the chief minister said that he don’t want to justify the matter as he was not aware of the situation inside the parliament.
“We were busy in Rajya Sabha session, so what happened in Lok Sabha, I am not aware of. Yet, there are certain individuals who have strong view points. Sometimes, party doesn’t endorse it and hence, the party issued a show cause notice. That’s all,” asserted the chief minister.
Meanwhile, the chief minister reacted to the FIR lodged by Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Debabrat Saikia in Assam against him for his alleged hateful statement on September 19, 2023 during the Jan Ashirwad rally in Vidhisha district, Madhya Pradesh, claiming that anyone can lodge a FIR until a person is charge-sheeted and produced before the court.
“When a politician cannot compete with you in the field and goes to police station to file an FIR, this signifies that they are the losers. Politicians play things among the people. In politics, if I utter something bad, I won’t be elected next time as a representative in the election. I take political revenge. Filing case is not in my nature; otherwise I would have filed numbers of cases against the media for writing against me. In politics, whoever, files a case signifies that person is a ‘Bachha’ (Kid),” added CM Sarma during the session.
