Guwahati, Feb 13 : The AGP has decided against giving away the prestigious Guwahati parliamentary seat to the BJP, following stiff resistance from its local unit.
The Guwahati district unit of the AGP is adamant not to leave the seat to the BJP and decided to recommend the name of the West Guwahati legislator Ramendra Narayan Kalita for the seat.
Kalita’s name has been propped up after the AGP leadership changed its earlier decision not to give tickets to any sitting legislator.
The party has also started shortlisting candidates for the constituencies where it is likely to contest.
Making a departure from its stand, the AGP has now decided to nominate Dhekiajuli legislator Joseph Toppo to contest from the Tezpur seat, encouraging the Guwahati unit to bid for Kalita.
“There is no justification for the BJP to claim the seat. In all the assembly constituencies as well as the panchayats that fall under the Guwahati parliamentary seat, our party’s performance is much better than BJP,” said an AGP leader from the Guwahati district unit.
The BJP has been staking its claim for the seat on the basis of better performance than the AGP in the last few parliamentary elections. Its candidate Bhupen Hazarika had finished second while the AGP’s Biren Baishya was in third place in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.
In the preceding election, BJP leader Bijoya Chakraborty, who is again seeking the party nomination from the seat, emerged victorious. The AGP, however, did not see any rationale in the BJP’s argument. It claimed that since the last two parliamentary elections, the political equation in Guwahati has changed and this was reflected in the last Assembly and panchayat elections.
An 11-member committee formed by the AGP to shortlist the candidates, too, is in favour of Kalita’s candidature. The committee is meeting on February 14 with the parliamentary committees to finalise its list of candidates, which would be then forwarded to the steering committee, which is the highest policy-making body of the AGP, for the final decision.
Apart from Kalita from Guwahati, the other names, the committee “unofficially” received from the respective parliamentary committees are Bhupen Roy from Barpeta, Gunin Hazarika from Koliabor, Joseph Toppo from Tezpur and Sabdha Rabha from Kokrajhar, sources said.
But the AGP is still in talks for an alliance with the Rabiram Narzary-led BPPF. If the deal is struck, the party would leave the Kokrajhar seat to the BPPF.
The party has already named the candidatures of Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh and Arun Sarma from Lakhimpur. It has decided to leave Jorhat, Nagaon, Dhubri, Mangaldai, Silchar and Karimganj for BJP. It will leave Diphu seat to the ASDC.
