Assam is all set to vote in the second phase of Lok Sabha Polls on April 26. Five Parliamentary constituencies Karimganj, Silchar, Nagaon, Darrang-Udalguri and Diphu.
Assam has 14 Lok Sabha seats, and this is the first election being held in the state after last year’s delimitation exercise which witnessed large scale redrawing of boundaries of both assembly and parliamentary seats.
In 2019, the BJP won nine seats in Assam. It has now set a target of winning 12 out of 14 seats.
The prominent candidates to contest in this phase are – Assam Excise Minister Parimal Suklabaidya is the BJP candidate in Silchar (SC), who will take on Congress youth leader and district general secretary Surjya Kanta Sarkar.
Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi from Nagaon against BJP’s Suresh Bora and AIUDF’s Aminul Islam, while BJP MP Dilip Saikia has been pitted against Congress candidate Madhab Rajbongshi in Darrang-Udalguri.
BJP MP Kripanath Mallah has been given the ticket in Karimganj against Congress nominee Hafez Ahmed Choudhury and AIUDF’s Sahabul Islam Choudhury. In the first phase, 38 candidates filed their nominations for the Kaziranga, Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Sonitpur and Lakhimpur constituencies.
Assam recorded 75.95 per cent voter turnout in the first phase of polls, which was held in five parliamentary constituencies in the state on Friday.
“My feedback – 1st Phase of voting in Assam was phenomenal. 5/5 seats are now firmly with Adarniya Narendra Modi Ji. The momentum for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is much bigger than we expected. In Phase 2, we will also be winning all five seats,” posted Assam Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma on Twitter.
Bengali Hindus and Muslims, both indigenous and migrant, are a majority in three of these five constituencies – southern Assam’s Karimganj and Silchar, and central Assam’s Nagaon.
They are a deciding factor in central Assam’s Darrang-Udalguri along with tea plantation workers. Their presence in central Assam’s Diphu, one of the two seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes in the State, is restricted to some urban centres.
Hindus and Muslims share the Bengali-dominated Barak Valley comprising Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj districts of southern Assam almost equally.
