Guwahati: The BJP’s chief minister designate Sarbananda Sonowal’s fortunes in politics went on an upswing the day in the year 2011 then BJP’s national president Nitin Gadkari decided to bring in a comparatively young, dynamic, all-acceptable leader with a mass base to lead the party in Assam in immediate future.
BJP’s then organization in-charge in Northeast and now a special invitee to the party’s national executive committee, Perala Shekhar Rao had the opportunity to work closely with Gadkari in latter’s innovative efforts to rope in Sonowal who was then a leader of Asom Gana Parishad (AGP).
“Gadkari used track-II channel to get in touch with Sarbananda Sonowal. Once he was offered to join the BJP by Gadkari, Sonowal who is a spiritual man, went to take advice of his guruji in Salasar Hanuman Temple in Rajasthan and decided to join the BJP as advised by him. Sonowal was picked by Gadkari because of his anti-Bangladeshi migrants stand and prime role he played in scrapping of the controversial IM(DT) Act, 1983 ; ideological closeness to BJP, his strong base among youth of Assam and Northeast as he was president of the AASU and chairman of North East Students’ Organisation (NESO),” Rao said.
“I was then asked to organize a massive public rally at Sonowal’s home town in Dibrugarh in eastern Assam where he joined the BJP on February 8, 2011 in presence of Nitin Gadkari and before a cheering crowd. He was simultaneously given the party’s membership slip and made a national executive member of the party in an out of the way gesture by the party president. Since then the graph of Sonowal’s political career as well as BJP’s fortunes in Assam have been on the upswing,” he said.
“In an extraordinary gesture, the Central leadership made Sonowal the state president of the BJP in Assam in 2014 only three years after he became a member. It usually takes at least ten years of experience of serving the party for anyone to become eligible to contest for state party president post in the BJP. The day Sonowal joined the BJP, Nitin Gadkari had instructed me, that it was my
responsibility to facilitate Sonowal’s comfortable acclimatization within the BJP in Assam and I tried my best to do the same,” said Shekar Rao.
Sonowal reciprocated outstandingly by ensuring a starling performance of the BJP in 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Assam. He was rewarded with a ministerial berth in Modi government with independent charge. But the call for taking over the reins of Assam BJP came from the party’s leadership three months before the 2016 Assembly polls as affairs within the party apparently went haywire in Assam under the stewardship of Siddhartha Bhattacharrya who succeeded Sonowal.
He obeyed and discharged his responsibility with clinical precision and demolished Congress in Assam this polls.
Credited with challenging the controversial Illegal Migrants’ Determination by Tribunal (IMDT) Act in the Supreme Court which finally scrapped it, Sonowal was branded the ‘national hero'(jatiya nayak) in Assam. He led All Assam Students Union as its president during 1992 to 1999.
A law graduate, Sonowal also led the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) as its chairman during 1996 to 2000 before he took final plunge into active politics by joining regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in 2001 and was elected the party’s MLA from Upper Assam’s Moran constituency same year.
In 2004, he successfully contested the Lok Sabha polls wresting prestigious Dibrugarh seat for the first time from the Congress by defeating former Union Minister Paban Singh Ghatowar. He, however, lost the 2009 parliamentary polls to Ghatowar from the same constituency. Then he started journey of the saffron course since 2011.
