Nagaon’s sitting MP Rajen Gohain of the BJP will definitely have his eye on history as he gets ready to defend his turf in central Assam.
Since Independence, anybody who has won the Lok Sabha constituency twice has gone on to complete a hattrick. Congress heavyweight Liladhar Kotoky represented the constituency for four consecutive terms from 1957 to 1977. Muhiram Saikia of the AGP represented it thrice from 1985 to 1998.
Now Gohain, who has retained the BJP’s control over Nagaon since 1999, is on a hattrick. But he has his task cut out this time — not so much because of the Congress’s Anil Raja, considered an outsider, but because of the presence of AUDF’s Sirajuddin Ajmal, the brother of party supremo Badruddin Ajmal.
The AUDF is expected to cut into the votes of both the BJP and the Congress as around five lakh of the total electorate of 14,17,309 belong to the minority community.
Poll pundits say if the AUDF cuts into the Congress’s traditional Muslim vote bank, Gohain will complete his hattrick.
The Nagaon seat comprises nine Assembly constituencies of which the AUDF and the Congress have three each, the AGP has two and the BJP has one.
Officially, there are 13 candidates in the fray for the seat but the main battle will be three-cornered — between Gohain, Raja and Ajmal.
For the voters, however, it is not important how many times a candidate has won but whether he or she is vocal enough in Parliament to take up their problems.
“How does it matter to us? What aggrieves us most is that our representatives remain silent in Parliament instead of taking up our problems,” Doyal Sil, 45, of Hojai said.
Gohain, like most other MPs from Assam, is also not known to be vocal in Parliament.
The main issues on which the polls are being fought in Nagaon are underdevelopment, poverty and largescale misutilisation of funds.
Rituparna Devi, 19, of Raha feels that the elected representatives must urgently address the issue of flood and erosion in Morigaon, Raha and Kampur.
Niladhar Hazarika, 72, of Dakhinpat feels that there should be an end to “politics over common problems”.
“Who can answer why more than 25,000 rickshaws are running in our town when only 5,500 of them have a licence? Everyone knows how illegal migration is changing the demographic pattern of the constituency. But as these people are vote banks, nobody bothers,” he added. Hazarika, who claims to have been a close friend of late MP Liladhar Kokoty, says he no longer believes in what politicians promise. “Kotoky could put people’s problems above politics. There is a big ideological gap between them and the politicians of today.” Hazarika may be accused of being biased towards his late friend but he may not be far from the truth.
