Congress supporters campaign for chief minister Tarun Gogoi. Picture by Aabir Borgohain

Titabor, March 26: Chief minister Tarun Gogoi is about to get into his car when an elderly man, supporting much of his weight on his walking stick, hobbles towards him. The determination written on the face of 93-year-old Bhuban Handique deters the security personnel from stopping him. Gogoi stops and extends a hand.

?People of Titabor need a leader like you. Titabor has seen development in the past five years like never before,? Handique told a beaming Gogoi, not in the manner of sycophants, but straight from the heart.

Expectations of the people of Titabor in Jorhat district were quite high when Gogoi won the byelection from the constituency in 2001 to retain the chief minister?s chair to which he had ascended three months earlier after the Assembly elections in May.

His brother Dip had won the Titabor seat, but vacated it after the Congress swept to power and Gogoi was made the chief minister although he was not an MLA.

?The main demand of the people of Titabor was to get it declared a subdivision. Gogoi has fulfilled this,? said Rudra Handique, the gaonbura (village headman) of Rangajan, the ancestral village of Gogoi. Gogoi is the first MLA from Titabor to become the chief minister. Besides its administrative elevation, Titabor?s basic amenities have also improved by leaps and bounds. The roads have been spruced up and drinking water provided to every nook and cranny of the constituency. In fact, even the roads in villages on the fringes of Titabor town, where a large section of the population is into traditional Assamese ornament making, have been gravelled. On the economic front, work on setting up a paper mill project is in the final stages.

Titabor also boasts of the state?s only rice research station built during the British era. In fact, rice from Titabor is famous all over the state for its taste.

Given the overall mood, Gogoi is upbeat about his prospects, so much so that he has not planned any election meeting in the next 10 days in his constituency, considered one of the rice bowls of the state. ?I will be busy campaigning in other parts of the state. I have full faith in the people of Titabor, I have given them whatever is possible. I have left it to them now,? he told The Telegraph.

Former MLA from Titabor, Hemanta Kalita, contesting on an AGP (Pragatisheel) ticket against the chief minister, admitted that Titabor had seen development during Gogoi?s term, but said the last five years had also witnessed the constituency being singed by corruption.

?Since the chief minister is not accessible to the common man, middlemen play a vital role, resulting in corruption,? he said. He said the chief minister had failed to meet the aspirations of the common man of Titabor and that would be the determining factor in the coming elections.

With over 1,20,000 voters, Titabor has a strong CPI presence with Giridhar Thengal winning the seat in 1978. Thengal Kacharis, a sub-tribe of the Bodos, have a strong base along the Assam-Nagaland border areas in Titabor. In fact, the first Thengal Kachari Autonomous Council was formed in Titabor a few months ago.

Winds of change blew over the constituency in 1985 when Debo Bora, former press adviser of Tarun Gogoi, won on an AGP ticket. Bora was the agriculture minister then. He wrested the seat from Joii Bora of the Congress, who was the MLA in the 1983 elections that were later declared ?illegal?.

However, the Congress won back the Titabor seat in 1991. Kalita won the seat for the AGP in 1996, but lost it to the chief minister?s brother in the next elections in 2001. Kalita again lost to the chief minister in the byelection.

Working in favour of Gogoi is the 30,000-strong tea belt votes, which appear relatively untouched by other parties.

Last six MLAs from Titabor: 1983 Joi Bora (Cong), 1985 Debo Bora (AGP), 1991 Mahendra Bora (Cong), 1996 Hemanta Kalita (AGP), 2001 Dip Gogoi (Cong) and Tarun Gogoi through by-election same year.