Guwahati, March 13 The Congress on Tuesday announced candidates for 12 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam, leaving two for its allies.
Party leader Gaurav Gogoi, whose Kaliabor constituency was scrapped in the delimitation exercise, will fight polls from the Jorhat seat. However, Jorhat is a stronghold for the BJP, which won it in the last two Lok Sabha elections.
It is believed that Gogoi, son of former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, was keen to fight polls from Nagaon, but its sitting Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi had been opposing his candidature and insisted that as he won the seat with a good margin in 2019, he must be fielded again from there.
Meanwhile, AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal has fielded a strong candidate in Nagaon, fuelling the chances of a potential vote division between the opposition parties.
Congress has also dropped sitting Barpeta MP Abdul Khaleque and fielded Deep Bayan instead.
It has also pitted former Assam minister and MLA Rockybul Hussin in Dhubri against Badruddin Ajmal.
Meanwhile, two seats - Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur - were left by Congress for its allies.
Lurinjyoti Gogoi, a former General Secretary of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) may fight from Dibrugarh on behalf of the INDIA bloc while it is not clear who will contest from Lakhimpur.
The BJP has earlier announced that Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will fight polls from the Dibrugarh seat and he had already started campaigning.
If Lurijyoti Gogoi fights against Sonowal, it may become an interesting contest.
This is Assam's first election since the Election Commission conducted a delimitation process only for the state last year, which the opposition parties fiercely criticised, claiming it was done to benefit the ruling BJP.
The state now has nine BJP MPs, three of the Congress, and one of the AIUDF.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has already announced that his party is set to win at least 11 seats in the state this time.
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