Manmohan to visit 'adopted' state

Guwahati: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is set to return to his adopted state as Congress's star campaigner in this election. The eminent economist has been representing the state in the Rajya Sabha for five terms since 1991. His current term will end in 2019.
"Manmohan Singh is a true representative of the state in Parliament. It was during his tenure as Prime Minister that the state's development took off.He is our star campaigner, along with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi," Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Anjan Dutta said. The dates and venues of his campaign have not been decided yet.
Singh last visited Assam in 2014 to campaign for Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha election. In one such meeting in Mahmora in Sivasagar district, Singh, conscious of the party's impending loss, turned his election speech into a humble farewell speech.
Of the many things Assam received from the Centre during Singh's two terms at the helm of the country were the broad gauge conversion project, connecting the southern part of the state and Tripura with the rest of India, the gas cracker project in Dibrugarh, 90:10 funding (90% by the Centre and 10% by the state) for all the northeastern states, and the four-lane highway from Nagaon to Dibrugarh, among others.
The one key issue that Singh could not resolve, however, was declaring the state's annual floods and erosion problem 'a national calamity'.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his last visit to the state in February to inaugurate the Rs 10,000-crore gas cracker project at Lepetkata in Dibrugarh district, admitted that he often inaugurates projects initiated by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. Modi had earlier targeted Singh in Kokrajhar where he said his predecessor had left the state in the lurch despite representing it in the Rajya Sabha for so many years.
Apart from Singh, Sonia and Rahul, Congress's list of star campaigners include Ghulam Nabi Azad and Digvijaya Singh. "We are finalizing the venues and dates of campaign and we should able to get the itinerary ready in a day or two," Dutta said.