Assam elections: Congress shifts its candidates to resort
Cong feels ruling BJP may lure its candidates if it falls short of majority
Guwahati: The Assam unit of the Congress has herded its Assembly poll candidates to a resort in Sonapur, about 30 km east of Guwahati. The move ahead of election results on May 2 is apparently to stop the ruling alliance led by the BJP from luring its candidates away. The Congress had fielded 95 candidates in the threephase poll that ended April 6. It left the remaining 31 seats to its coalition partners in the 10-party Mahajot, or grand alliance.
Fearing poaching, the Assam Congress has shifted its candidates of Assembly polls into a resort in an obvious attempt to insulate them from being lured away by the ruling party which the Opposition feels is going to fall short of the majority.
The Congress had fielded 95 candidates in the three-phase polls that ended on April 6. It left the remaining 31 seats to its coalition partners in the 10-party Mahajot, or grand alliance.
Though officially they deny, but facts remain that it was the “manoeuvring ability” of BJP minister Himanata Biswa Sarma, who once in Congress was a nightmare for the BJP too, is now haunting Opposition the most.
Political observers point out that the memory of 2010 Rajya Sabha polls in which four Assam BJP MLAs — Rumi Nath, Shambhu Singh Mallah, Kartik Sen Sinha and Abhijit Hazarika — were lured away by Himanta Biswa Sarma, then a Congress minister, on the day polling was held, is still afresh into the mind of Congress leaders who don’t want to leave anything to chance. The Congress had snatched away a sure RS seat of Opposition in 2010.
This was more visible when Rupjyoti Kurmi, the party’s three-time MLA from Mariani constituency, told reporters that the BJP has been sending feelers to a few candidates. “Everybody knows what happened in Goa and Manipur. The BJP will try to buy some victors among us or browbeat the opposition MLAs with threats of implicating them in some cases or the other,” he said.
Congress spokesperson Bobbeeta Sharma played down the issue and told reporters, “The candidates want to stay together for a few days in a relaxed environment away from public contact.”