Ulfa, AGP two sides of same coin: Assam minister

A day after Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi called the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) a "cousin brother" of Ulfa, state power minister Pradyut Bordoloi said Saturday that the AGP and Ulfa are two sides of the same coin.

Gogoi had called AGP the United Liberation Front of Assam's (Ulfa) "cousin brother" after the AGP reacted to the recent WikiLeaks revelation that AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi had in 2006 equated Assam's regional political party with insurgent outfits.

AGP president and former Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said Friday that the Congress had links with the Ulfa.

Former Assam governor Lt. General S.K. Sinha also alleged Friday that a former member of the outlawed Ulfa was now a minister in Gogoi's cabinet.

"Everyone knows that a former Ulfa member is in the cabinet in Assam," Sinha said, while talking to the media during a programme at Tezpur University here.

"Some ministers in the AGP government were linked to the Ulfa in the initial days of the AGP government. AGP ministers' vehicles were used to transport arms and ammunition of the Ulfa," said Bordoloi while addressing a press conference Saturday.

He alleged that a minister in the AGP government had met a team of Ulfa cadres near Margherita in Upper Assam in 1988. The team had returned after completing arms training in Kachin in Myanmar.

"Even in 1996, the AGP came to power with Ulfa's help. About 1,000 Congress leaders were killed by the Ulfa with direction from the AGP," alleged Bordoloi.