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  • Tarun Gogoi's Birthday: Down The Memory Lane

    Regional
    Tarun Gogoi's Birthday: Down The Memory Lane
    Tarun Gogoi, former CM of Assam, began his political career in 1968 by serving as the member of the municipal board in Jorhat.

    Digital Desk: Tarun Gogoi, the man who led Assam from violence to peace, was born on October 11th, 1936 into a traditional Assamese Tai-Ahom family at Rangajan Tea Estate, in the erstwhile Sibsagar District, now the Jorhat District of Assam.

    Gogoi started his political career as a member of the municipal board at Jorhat in 1968 before being elected to the Fifth Lok Sabha in 1971 from Jorhat.
     
    He became the Chief Minister of Assam in 2001 and succeeded the Asom Gana Parishad government led by Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.  He remained the Chief Minister of Assam from 2001 to 2016 for three consecutive terms. 

    Tarun Gogoi is credited with having brought the many militant outfits operating in the state, including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), to the negotiating table and mitigating militant insurgency within the state when the state was at a peak of insurgency.
     
    He is also credited with improving the state's fiscal position, getting the state out of close to bankruptcy, and engineering an economic turnaround through the implementation of various state government-led relief schemes, particularly for the rural areas. 

    His initiation of development projects in the state is credited with having stopped the flight of capital out of the state. He breathed his last on November 23, 2020, at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital due to multiple organ failure.