New Delhi: The Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP) has come out in support of the country’s top wrestlers protesting at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for several days now against the Bharatiya Janata Party MP and Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh for serious allegations of sexual harassment. 

AJP is the first regional entity to hold a demonstration in northeast India in solidarity with the sportspersons’ protest. 

On May 11, AJP held a demonstration in Guwahati where their members and leaders were seen not only raising slogans against “the pathetic indifference of the central government over the plight of the sports champions” but also talking to passers-by to raise awareness of the issue.

The leaders, stating that the dithering of the Union government on ensuring justice to the wrestlers would “seriously impact the morale of Indian sportspersons”, expressed “shock as to why Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has a history of criminal antecedents, has not been removed from the WFI leadership.”

The party’s general secretary and a former state minister Jagadish Bhuyan said in a press note that the aim behind the demonstration was to make common citizens in Guwahati aware of how “the government is hell-bent on protecting a BJP MP with known criminal antecedents.”

"We are pleased with the overwhelming support we got from the people passing by,” Bhuyan tweeted. 

Party president and former All Assam Students Union (AASU) leader Lurinjyoti Gogoi also tweeted stating, “We wish to convey our full support to these gems of India. Assam stands with them.” 

The AJP was one of the three new regional entities formed in Assam in the run-up to the 2019 assembly elections. Though it failed to open its account in those polls, a recent opinion poll run by Assamese news channel Pratidin Time put the party as the most popular after BJP and Congress in the state. 

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