Beef-eating charge: Poll candidate’s mother to sue Assam CM for ₹1, seeks apology

GUWAHATI

The mother of an Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) candidate, who was defeated in the April 9 State Assembly election, said she would bring a ₹1 defamation suit on Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for “false allegations” made against her during the poll campaign.

Posting an open letter on social media platform X after Mr. Sarma was sworn in as the Chief Minister for the second straight term, Sujata Gurung Chowdhury also sought a public apology from the Chief Minister for his remarks with “mala fide intention” during the campaign to humiliate her publicly and put her family at risk.

She is the mother of 27-year-old Kunki Chowdhury, the AJP candidate who contested the Guwahati Central constituency and lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Vijay Kumar Gupta by 61,921 votes.

Ms. Gurung Chowdhury, 65, said she was a common woman until Mr. Sarma dragged her into the political battle by “repeatedly uttering” her name during “your election stint”.

“Hon’ble CM Sirjee, it may be noted that your defamation suit will be for an amount of ₹1 (Rupee one only) along with a public apology from you,” she wrote, without specifying when the case would be filed.

Mr. Sarma had branded her a “beef eater”, “non-Sanatani”, and “anti-India communist” without knowing anything about her life, food habits, culture, religion, ideology, or “perhaps me as a person”, she alleged.

Ms. Gurung Chowdhury accused Mr. Sarma of building an election narrative about her to politically target her daughter, who contested the Guwahati Central constituency as a candidate of the Congress-led Opposition alliance.

She had initially avoided responding publicly to the smear campaign against her because engaging “before a political hound does not make any sense”, she said. She has now because Mr. Sarma, as an elected representative, is “answerable to me and to the public”.

Citizens have the constitutional right to choose their religion, culture, food habits, and ideology, Ms. Gurung Chowdhury said. “You may have won the election, but my battle will go on as long as the common man like me keeps breathing,” she said.

“I have not only been defamed in public, but the photograph of my minor children released in public domains has endangered their lives,” she alleged, signing off the letter as a “Hindu by birth and culture and not by politics”.

Ms. Gurung Chowdhury had earlier approached the National Commission for Women, accusing Mr. Sarma of making “false, baseless and malicious” statements during the campaign.