Five Assam assembly seats to vote on November 13, announces ECI
Polling for Behali, Samaguri, Dhalai, Bongaigaon and Sidli assembly segments will take place on November 13
GUWAHATI: The Election Commission of India on Tuesday announced bypolls to five assembly seats in Assam that fell vacant following the resignation of five legislators who were elected to the Lok Sabha in the general elections.
Polling for Behali, Samaguri, Dhalai, Bongaigaon and Sidli assembly segments will take place on November 13. The last date for filing of nomination in Assam is October 25 and the counting of votes will take place on November 23.
ECI on Tuesday announced bypolls to 48 assembly segments and two Lok Sabha seats along with state elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. All bypolls except to the Nanded Lok Sabha constituency in Maharashtra and Kedarnath assembly seat in Uttarakhand will be held on November 13.
In Assam, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party will contest three seats while its ruling partners, Asom Gana Parishad and United Peoples Party Liberal (UPPL), will put up candidates in the other two. On the other hand, the 18-party Congress-led platform of opposition parties in the state called Asom Sanmilito Mancha (ASM), is yet to take a call on the sharing of seats.
The announcement of the election schedule comes just a day after the state BJP unit announced that it has recommended three candidates for each of the three seats to the party’s central leadership.
BJP’s Assam president Bhabesh Kalita told reporters on Monday that senior state leaders discussed the three seats at a meeting on Sunday and firmed up its recommendation.
“Three names of probable candidates from each of these seats have been forwarded to the party’s parliamentary board which will take a final call on candidates who will be get tickets,” he said.
“In 2021, the Sidli seat was won by UPPL while AGP had bagged the Bongaigaon seat. We had contested the previous assembly polls together and this time too BJP will support its coalition partners in those two seats,” said Kalita.
Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah said the party has formed five committees to suggest names of probable candidates. “We are ready for the by-elections and the decision on candidates will be taken on or before October 19 after consultations with all leaders within our party and representatives of all parties in ASM,” Borah said on Tuesday after announcement of the poll schedule.
He indicated that the Congress might contest three seats while Raijor Dal and CPI (M), which have one seat each in the assembly, might put up their candidates in the Bongaigaon and Behali seats respectively.
“Voters are fed up with false promises of BJP. The goons of the ruling party attacked a Congress rally in Samaguri on Tuesday in which one of our legislators was injured. We urge the government to remove the police chief of Nagaon district and take the strictest action against those responsible for the incident,” said Borah.
Five assembly seats in Assam had fallen vacant following the Lok Sabha polls as two MLAs from the ruling BJP (including a cabinet minister), one each from alliance partners Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and United Peoples Party Liberal (UPPL) and one from opposition Congress won in the general elections.
In the Lok Sabha polls, two MLAs from BJP, Parimal Suklabaidya, a cabinet minister who had represented Dhalai and Ranjit Dutta from Behali in the state assembly, had won from the Cachar and Tezpur seats.
Veteran AGP leader Phani Bhushan Choudhury, who has represented the Bongaigaon assembly seat since 1985 won from Barpeta Lok Sabha seat and UPPL’s Joyanta Basumatary who was the MLA from Sidli, won from Kokrajhar.
Congress’s Rakibul Hussain, a five-time legislator from Samaguri, on the other hand, won the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat with a record margin.