New Delhi: Assam polls: Congress names 42 candidates in first list; Gaurav Gogoi to contest from Jorhat
The Congress on Tuesday released its first list of 42 candidates for the upcoming elections to the 126-member Assam assembly, becoming the first party in the state to start announcing its candidates.
Gaurav Gogoi, the president of the party’s state unit and Congress’s deputy leader in Lok Sabha, will contest the election from the Jorhat. The assembly segment is one of the 10 that make up the Jorhat Lok Sabha seat he represents in parliament.
Apart from Gogoi, other prominent faces in the Congress list are former state unit president Ripun Bora who will be contesting from Barchalla and the leader of opposition in the assembly, Debabrata Saikia, who will contest from the family’s stronghold Nazira.
Nandita Das, the sitting MLA from the reserved seat of Boko, has been fielded from Hajo-Sualkuchi seat, which is also reserved for scheduled caste candidates. Mira Borthakur Goswami, the party’s women wing president, has been named from the Dispur seat.
The Congress, which is in talks with several opposition parties to forge an alliance against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, had announced earlier that it would contest from 100 seats.
The state elections will test whether a united opposition can dismantle the BJP’s decade-long grip on the northeast
The announcement comes amidst a bitter war of words between the Congress and the ruling BJP. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has targeted Gaurav Gogoi, the son of a former three-term chief minister Tarun Gogoi, alleging that Gaurav and his British wife, Elizabeth, who was first posted in Pakistan and later in India as a representative of a climate action group, had ties to Pakistani intelligence.
Gogoi has denied the allegations, calling them a smear campaign intended to distract from governance issues.
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