Ranee Narah

Lakhimpur, April 21: The Congress’s biggest challenge in Lakhimpur is the Congress itself as it prepares to wrest the seat from the AGP.

The strong undercurrent of tension erupted into an ugly show of dissidence when six Congress MLAs protested against the candidature of former MP Ranee Narah.

The six “rebels” came around very quickly, of course, with the party staging a show of unity, but the simmering tension continues and this rebellion could ultimately turn out to be the Congress’s undoing.

To top the dissidence, a strong third candidate emerged in the constituency in the form of Ranoj Pegu of the Sanmilita Gana Shakti, Assam (SGSA) who is expected to corner the traditional Mising votes as he is also belongs to that tribe.

A majority of the Mising community has always sided with Ranee and her husband Bharat, a former water resources minister of the state.

He was shunted out of the water resources department following allegations of corruption in executing flood-control projects. And it is his alleged failure to solve even a fraction of the people’s flood-related problems that has become the talking point of campaign this time.

The Lakhimpur Lok Sabha seat has nine Assembly segments, including Majuli, Naoboicha, Lakhimpur, Dhakuakhana, Dhemaji, Jonai, Chabua, Doomdooma and Sadiya. There are 13,33,423 voters spread across five districts located on either bank of the Brahmaputra.

Sitting AGP MP Arun Sarma, a vet, is highlighting Bharat Narah’s failure to stymie his wife’s challenge.

“Why should the people vote for the Congress when even their MLAs had opposed her candidature? We have been going strong with our demand of declaring floods and erosion in Assam as a national problem and I will continue to work for this. There are other key issues like according World Heritage status to Majuli, building new bridges over the Brahmaputra besides speeding up work for the Bogibeel bridge,” Sarma said.

In 2004 parliamentary elections, Sarma defeated Ranee Narah by a margin of 28,148 votes. While Sarma polled 3,00,865 votes, Narah got 2,72,717 votes.

Though there are 16 candidates in the fray, the focus will be on the triangular contest between Sarma, Ranee and Pegu.

Pegu believes that he has a fair chance of wining as he has been “able to win the mass support of the Mising community” which is the dominant community in the constituency.

The Congress’s campaign managers claim that everything is hunky dory.

“There is no dissidence in the party and everybody is working unitedly. We will win the elections. The people are fed up with an MP from the Opposition. And Ranoj Pegu? We do not think he will be any factor for us,” a senior Congress leader of the district said.

However, the ground situation tells a different story.

Sumitra Patir, the Congress MLA from Dhemaji and one of the MLAs who raised their voices against Ranee, resigned from her election committee and Sadiya Congress MLA Bolin Chetia moved out of Lakhimpur to help Dibrugarh Congress candidate Paban Singh Ghatowar.

A voter of Lakhimpur town, Sarat Hatimoria, said: “The failure of Ranee Narah’s husband Bharat to effectively tackle the flood and erosion problem is shameful.”

The AGP is also trying to extract benefit from the Congress-SGSA quarrel over the issue of misappropriation of funds from the Mising Autonomous Council (MAC). The MAC is run jointly by the Congress and the SGSA.

Fighting as an Independent in 1990, Pegu had polled around 90,000 votes.

The SGSA election planks were development and effecting a change in the political scenario of the constituency, Pegu said.