Badruddin Ajmal

Silchar, March 7: The Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), the newly constituted political conglomeration of religious and linguistic minority organisations, has finalised its first list of 10 candidates for the Assembly polls next month.

AUDF working president Hafiz Rashid Choudhury said over telephone from Guwahati that his party, which has hammered out an electoral tie-up with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), would hold a few more days of parleys at its headquarters in Guwahati. The aim is to reach a consensus on candidates.

He disclosed that the names of other nominees would be finalised in phases.

A source said AUDF president Badruddin Ajmal would file nominations from two strongholds of the party, at Hojai and Jamunamukh constituencies in Nagaon district.

But the party?s frantic attempts to forge an electoral alliance with the AGP, led by former state minister Brindaban Goswami, has now run into rough weather. Protests are snowballing against this move from a powerful section of the party leadership.

NCP leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker Purna A. Sangma initiated this tie-up, as he was hoping for potential dividends in the Assembly p?r?. The AGP tie-up could not be finalised following strong lobbying against this proposal by two general secretaries in the party, Abdus Samad and Nazir Uddin Ahmed.

Choudhury admitted that this move to forge an alliance was now on the backburner, but did not rule out its revival at a later stage when the names of party nominees are finalised.

Ahmed said over telephone that the UDF and the AGP were yet to reach a consensus on the scrapping of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act.

Though the first list of the UDF has not been formally announced, among the names which figure in it is that of Kamalendu Bhattacharjee, a former Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Assam and a former state PCC general secretary.

He is likely to contest from Udarbond, a constituency in Cachar district dominated by tea and minority voters.