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Assam: Focus shifts to bye-elections after Lok Sabha polls
Two sitting Rajya Sabha MPs and five MLAs, including a cabinet minister, are among the 14 Lok Sabha winners in the state
With the Lok Sabha polls getting over, Assam will now shift focus to upcoming bye-elections to five assembly and two Rajya Sabha seats that will be held in the next six months.
Two sitting Rajya Sabha MPs, Union minister and former CM Sarbananda Sonowal and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa (both from Bharatiya Janata Party), and five MLAs, including a cabinet minister, are among the 14 Lok Sabha winners in the state.
Sonowal had won the assembly election from Majuli in May 2021, but after he was denied a second consecutive term as chief minister over Himanta Biswa Sarma, he shifted to the Rajya Sabha in September the same year and was included in the Narendra Modi cabinet as minister for ports and shipping.
In the Lok Sabha elections, Sonowal contested from Dibrugarh and defeated Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) president Lurinjyoti Gogoi, who was the consensus candidate from the INIDA bloc, by a margin of 2,79,321 votes. The 61-year-old is expected to secure a cabinet berth in the new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government one more time.
Tasa was elected to the Rajya Sabha in June 2019. In the general elections, he contested from the Kaziranga (earlier known as Kaliabar) seat and won against his nearest rival Roselina Tirkey of Congress by 2,48,947 votes.
Besides Sonowal and Tasa, five MLAs – two from BJP (Parimal Suklabaidya and Ranjit Dutta), one each from the Asom Gana Parishad (Phani Bhushan Choudhury) and United Peoples Party Liberal (Joyanta Basumatary) and one from Congress (Rakibul Hussain) will also have to vacate their assembly seats after recording wins in the Lok Sabha polls.
Suklabaidya, who represents the Dholai assembly, is the minister for transport and excise in the BJP-led state government. In the Lok Sabha polls, he won from the Silchar seat (reserved for scheduled caste after delimitation) by trouncing Surya Kanta Sarkar of Congress by 2,64,311 votes.
Dutta is a veteran MLA who has represented the Behali seat four times and was a minister in the Sonowal cabinet. He defeated Prem Lal Ganju of Congress frmo Sonitpur by 3,61,408 votes in the parliamentary polls.
Basumatary, who represents the Sidli seat in the state assembly, won this time from Kokrajhar by defeating Kampa Borgoyari of Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF). Choudhury, the most successful MLA in the state (he has never lost an election from Bongaigaon since 1985), defeated Deep Bayan of Congress in the Barpeta seat this time.
The biggest upset of this election happened in Dhubri where Congress’ Hussain trounced All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) chief Badruddin Ajmal, who had won the seat three consecutive times since 2009, by a margin of over one million votes — the second highest victory margin in the country.
Since assuming office in May 2021, CM Sarma has not expanded his cabinet. But with Suklabaidya getting elected for Lok Sabha, there are speculations that it might happen soon. Sources in the BJP said the exercise to select candidates for the vacant assembly and Rajya Sabha seats is also likely to happen soon.
