ASSAM- Election Prescience

inananda Reddi's opportunist manoeuvre to try to set up an Andhra Congress more or less along the lines of Biju Patnaik's venture in Orissa. This abortive WITH Assembly elections fast approaching, the parties in the state are gradually stirring, The most agitated and divided party is Congress(R), whose performance in the mid-term Lok Sabha poll had raised legitimate hopes in the minds of its leaders. The infighting between the Chaudhury and Bhagavati factions is not only still going on in the organisational wing of the Congress, but is being extended to the governmental wing. A 20-page press note issued by the Government of Assam last July, brought the bitterness and virulence of the continuing civil war to the surface. A tape-recorded speech made by Moinul Huq Chaudhury, the Minister for Industrial Development in the Central Cabinet, in his home district, Cachar, infuriated the entire Assam Cabinet and led to instant retaliation. In his speech, Chaudhury had accused the State Government of deliberately neglecting Cachar's industrial development and scuttling a paper mill project.