Guwahati: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s 31-year-old son Gaurav Gogoi is one of the Congress nominees for contesting forthcoming Lok Sabha polls in Assam. With this Gaurav is now all set to take a plunge in electoral politics after waiting in the wings for the last couple of years.
Gaurav has been nominated by the Congress party to contest Lok Sabha election from Kaliabor constituency in Assam.
The Congress leadership who has remained grateful to Tarun Gogoi not only for reviving the party’s fortunes in Assam but also winning three consecutive Assembly elections in since 2001, has fielded his son Gaurav from Kaliabor constituency which is virtually a fiefdom of Gogois given that it was earlier represented by his father Tarun Gogoi on more than one occasions while his uncle Dip Gogoi is the sitting MP from there.
Besides Gaurav, Congress has nominated sitting MLA Sushmita Deb, daughter of veteran Congress leader and former Union minister Santosh Mohan Deb and Manas Bora, son of Assam’s social welfare minister Akon Bora to contest Lok Sabha polls from Silchar and Guwahati constituencies respectively.
Gaurav Gogoi (31), an engineer-turned- development activist-turned politician, had his first brush with electoral politics during 2011 Assembly election in Assam when his father engaged him to take care of electioneering in Titabor Legislative Assembly Constituency (LAC) which is represented by the senior Gogoi in Assam assembly.
Gaurav Gogoi was born to a family of politicians in 1982 when his father Tarun Gogoi was already an MP in Lok Sabha from Assam. Tarun Gogoi became a Union minister when Gaurav was 11 years old and chief minister of Assam in 2001 when Gaurav was just 19 years old. He went to St. Columbus School in Delhi. He went to US in 2008 to study public administration and acquired a degree from New York University. He worked for a brief period as policy aide with the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York.
The Congress is contesting 13 seats out of total 14 in Lok Sabha polls in Assam. The party is not fielding any candidate in Kokrajhar parliamentary constituency in favour of its ally Bodoland People’s Front (BPF).
The party has so far declared 10 of its nominees. Besides Gaurav Gogoi, Sushmita Deb and Manas Bora, the rest seven nominees are union minister Paban Singh Ghatowar (Dibrugarh), former union minister and sitting MP Bijoy Krishna Handique (Jorhat), sitting MLA Bhupen Bora (Tezpur), union minister Ranee Narah (Lakhimpur), sitting MP Lalit Mohan Suklabaidya (Karimganj), sitting MP Biren Singh Engti (Diphu), sitting MP Ismail Hussain (Barpeta). Candidates for Dhubri, Nagaon and Mangaldoi constituencies are yet to be finalized by the party.