Tarun Gogoi treated me like a son, his death a personal loss: Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi with Tarun Gogoi’s son Gaurav and his mother Dolly.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Wednesday said that former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who died on Monday, treated him like a son and the death has been a personal loss for him.

Gogoi passed away Monday while undergoing treatment for post Covid-19 complications. His body has been kept at Srimanta Sankardeva Kalakshetra, a cultural institution in Guwahati, for people to pay their final tributes. The cremation would be held on Thursday in Guwahati.

Gandhi visited Guwahati Wednesday morning to pay his tributes to Gogoi and meet his family. “Gogoi ji was not just a leader of Assam, he was a national leader. He inspired us by bringing the people of Assam together and by bringing peace to the state. He did a great service for Assam and he did a tremendous service for India,” Gandhi said at Kalakshetra.

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“He was my teacher, my guru. He explained to me — like nobody can — what Assam is, what people of Assam are, the complexities of this state, the beauty of this state,” he added.

Gandhi emphasised that Gogoi could effectively bring together people of Assam, cutting across communities and ideologies, in an “exemplary way”. He said whenever he met Gogoi, the latter would never discuss himself but about the state and its people.

A lawyer by education and training, Gogoi was elected for the first time to the Lok Sabha in 1971. He had served as Union Minister of State in the 1990s. In 2016, in what turned out to be his final election, he was elected as an MLA from Titabor. He was one of the Northeast’s most prominent political leaders.

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People from across the state, political leaders cutting across parties, and leaders of various socio-cultural organisations visited Kalakshetra to pay their last tributes to Gogoi. “People of Assam will always remember his efforts to bring back peace to Assam… that is his great contribution to the state,” Dipankar Nath, president of the All Assam Students Union, said.

© The Indian Express (P) Ltd