Dibrugarh March 24: The Asom Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) has decided to support Congress candidates in the ensuing parliamentary elections.
The decision was taken at an executive committee meeting at the union headquarters here. However, the decision was adopted without any formal records since the ACMS is a trade union, which cannot formally support a political party, sources said.
“Although we are a trade union we have always been supporting the Congress during the elections, be it the Assembly or the parliamentary polls, and this time, too, there is no deviation from the same,” said a union office-bearer.
Today’s meeting was chaired by the ACMS president Paban Singh Ghatowar, who, apart from being the Congress chief of the state, is also vying for the Dibrugarh seat for the fifth time in a row.
Kamakhaya Prasad Tasha, Ghatowar’s rival candidate from the BJP, had accused him of ruining the Assam Tea Corporation Limited (ATCL) gardens. Ghatowar, however, met chief minister Tarun Gogoi with an ACMS delegation a few days ago. Gogoi apprised the delegation on the steps initiated by his government for improving the condition of the sick ATCL gardens.
Ghatowar, according to party sources, is worried by the challenge thrown by Tasha, also a tea community leader who has led the Assam Tea Tribe Student’s Association (ATTSA) as its general secretary since 1995. He joined the BJP a couple of months ago.
The BJP high command, assuming the significance of the constituency, fielded Tasha in the hope that the young leader might make inroads into the tea belt, which has been a traditional Congress bastion since independence.
The ACMS has 21 branches in the Brahmaputra valley with around six lakh members, half the strength of the tea community population in the valley. Apart from Ghatowar, several ministers and MLAs from Gogoi’s cabinet like Etwa Munda, Rameshwar Dhanowar, Dileshwar Tanti, Eklias Tirkey, Raju Sahu, Prithibi Majhi are from the community.
During the 2001 Assembly elections, the ACMS had made an “informal demand” to the Congress to give tickets to candidates from tea community for those constituencies, which are dominated by tea tribes.
The party, too, had complied with the demand to a large extent. Later, the union had also demanded berths for the community’s MLAs during Gogoi’s ministry expansion, after which Etwa Munda was accommodated as minister of state.
The Dibrugarh constituency, which consists of nine Assembly segments, has a total voter strength of 9,78,592. Of this, around 35 per cent are tea voters.
Poll process
The election process has began in Manipur with the issuing of formal poll notification, reports PTI. Manipur will go to polls in two phases in the two parliamentary constituencies — Outer Manipur (ST) on April 20 and Inner Manipur on April 26. Returning officer for Outer Manipur Y. Surchandra Singh in a notice said the last date for filing of nomination papers was March 31.
