Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will campaign in Assam on March 30, BJP leaders said.
Bharatiya Janata Party sources on Saturday said that the Prime Minister will be addressing two rallies at Moran in Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency and Gohpur under Tezpur constituency.
While BJP’s sitting Dibrugarh MP, Rameswar Teli, is seeking mandate for a second term, state Labour Minister Pallab Lochan Das has been fielded from Tezpur, replacing sitting MP Ram Prasad Sarmah.
While Dibrugarh is a tea tribe-dominated constituency, tea tribe voters are also one of the deciding factors in Tezpur constituency.
Both Teli and Das hail from tea tribe community.
The Opposition Congress, on the other hand, is planning to rope in General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi to campaign in some constituencies in Assam. The party is, however, yet to declare the schedule of its star campaigners in Assam.
Campaigning has picked up in Assam, particularly for the five constituencies – Lakhimpur, Tezpur, Jorhat, Dibrugarh and Kaliabar – going to polls for the first phase on April 11.
Meanwhile, sitting BJP MP from Assam’s Tezpur, Ram Prasad Sarmah, who has been dropped for the 2019 polls, on Saturday said that he will float a new party which will bring in all the old and “neglected” BJP leaders.
The BJP has replaced Sarmah with state minister Pallab Lochan Das.
The saffron party released on Friday its second list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls containing 36 names, including that of Lochan, who holds the portfolios of labour ministry and tea tribes welfare in Assam.
Das was elected from Rangapara constituency to the Assam Assembly in 2011 on a Congress ticket. He joined the saffron party along with Finance Minister Himanta Sarma and several other Congress leaders in 2016.
He was appointed minister of state (MoS) for power in the Sarbananda Sonowal-led government on the year of his joining the saffron party, and was later accorded MoS (independent) charge of labour welfare, tea tribe welfare and education departments in a reshuffle.
Tezpur will be going to polls in the first phase on April 11, when Das will lock horns with Congress candidate MGVK Bhanu, a retired IAS bureaucrat.
Meeting media persons here, Sarmah said that he is not a “chowkidar” but an employee of the people. “There is no value and place for old leaders of the party in Assam. All the neglected leaders will be brought together in the new party,” he said.
The MP had resigned from the party after the state leadership and election committee did not include his name in the panel sent to the BJP’s Parliamentary Board to consider for the forthcoming polls. Also announcing his resignation on Facebook, Sarmah had blamed “some intruders” for the neglect of the BJP’s old guard.
“I was strongly raising my voice on their behalf (old guards). Now there will be none to raise voice for them,” added Sharma, who was elected for the first time to the Lok Sabha in 2014 from the Tezpur parliamentary constituency that has a sizeable Gorkha population.
Sarmah, however, did not mention if the proposed new party will be floated immediately or after the elections are over.
A senior BJP leader and RSS member, Sarmah had been working for strengthening the two organisations in Assam for a long time.
While there was a strong anti-incumbency factor against him in the constituency, he also got entangled in some controversies.
According to sources, Sharma’s candidature came at stake following his daughter’s arrest in connection with the APSC job scam, where she was earlier selected as a Assam Police Service officer. (Agencies)
