News Analysis India

Tag: Assam assembly election 2021

  • BJP strongman Himanta Biswa Sarma is new Assam CM

    Express News Service
    GUWAHATI: BJP strongman Himanta Biswa Sarma will be the new Assam chief minister.

    His name as the BJP Legislature Party leader was proposed by outgoing CM Sarbananda Sonowal and seconded by BJP state unit chief and MLA Ranjeet Kumar Dass and MLA Nandita Garlosa.

    In the 126-member Assam House, BJP has 60 MLAs. Its allies Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) have nine and six MLAs respectively. Both parties backed Sarma as the CM. The swearing-in is expected on Monday.

    The BJP legislature party meeting was also attended by party’s central leaders Narendra Singh Tomar, BL Santhosh, Arun Singh and Vaijyanta Panda.

    Sarma, a five-time minister, was first elected to the Assembly from the Jalukbari seat in 2001 when he defeated Asom Gana Parishad biggie Bhrigu Kumar Phukan. He went on to win all the subsequent elections by huge margins of votes. 

    Noting his ability as a minister, efficiency to run a department by taking along all and his political wisdom, observers say Sarma should have become the Assam CM long back.

    He had his eyes fixed on the CM chair even during his life in the Congress but he fell out with his then mentor and former CM Tarun Gogoi following the emergence of the latter’s son Gaurav Gogoi in Assam’s political landscape. He left the party to wear saffron. 

    When Assam won the 2016 polls, the BJP took the lead in forming the non-Congress conglomerate of political parties called North East Democratic Alliance and made Sarma its convenor.

    He has not only contributed to the prowess of the BJP in Assam ever since his defection but hoisted the party’s flag across the Northeast.

    A master election strategist who is widely known for his political acumen, he was instrumental in scripting the BJP’s victory, not just in Assam but also in some states of the Northeast. The BJP also rules Tripura, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh and is a constituent of the ruling coalition in Nagaland and Meghalaya.

    Sarma had played a key role in toppling the Peoples’ Party of Arunachal government in 2016 when 33 of its 43 MLAs, led by CM Pema Khandu, had joined the BJP.

    He did not stop there. The next year, he helped the BJP form a government for the first time in Manipur. The BJP had won 22 seats as against the Congress’s 28 in the 60-member House but he managed to cobble up the numbers with his efforts, including engineering defections.

  • Campaigning for second phase of Assam polls to end today

    By ANI
    GUWAHATI: Campaigning for the second phase of Assam assembly polls will end on Tuesday evening.

    The second phase poll is scheduled to take place on April 1. This phase will see polling on 39 seats.

    As many as 345 candidates are in the fray in the second phase, including 26 women.

    The total number of eligible voters in this phase is 73,44,631, of which 37,34,537 are male and 36,09,959 are female, while 135 are third gender voters.

    Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president J P Nadda, Union Minister Smriti Irani, Assam Chief Minister Sonowal, and Hemanta Viswa Sarma will be doing hectic campaigning on Tuesday.

    In 2016, the assembly polls were carried out in two phases in Assam. BJP and its allies had won 86 out of 126 seats and overthrown the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government which ruled the state for 15 years.

    Polling for the next two phases will be held on April 1 and April 6. The counting of votes will take place on May 2.  

  • 11% candidates declared criminal cases against themselves in phase 2 Assam assembly polls: ADR

    The Assam Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of all the 345 candidates contesting in the polls to be held on April 1.

  • Modi attacks Congress at Assam poll rally, says NDA ensured peace and development

    By Express News Service
    GUWAHATI:  Stepping up attack on the Congress during his poll campaign in Assam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday termed the grand old party a “loot engine” which is desperate to come to power in the northeastern state “at any cost” to fill its “empty coffers”. Making fun of the guarantees given by Congress to the people if it is voted to power in Assam, Modi said the opposition party gave “false guarantees” of providing jobs and empowering women but did nothing when it was in power at the Centre and also in Assam at the same time earlier.

    The Congress can go to any extent for coming to power and this is evident from the “lies” that they are spreading through their manifesto and the alliances they are entering to gain power, the Prime Minister said at an election rally in Bokakhat in Golaghat district.

    “When there was a Congress government at the Centre and the state at the same time, there was double neglect, double corruption and  double infiltration,” he mockingly said. There was nobody to listen to the people either in Assam or at the Centre and now they should keep the “loot engine Congress” far away from them as the party only makes “false promises and gives false hopes to the poor,” he said.

    “The Congress is now giving guarantees… Their manifesto is guarantees of lies, of confusion, instability, bomb, bandook aur blockade (bomb, guns and blockades), insurgency and separatism, corruption and nepotism,” Modi said. “The party’s coffers are empty and they want to come to power at any cost to fill it. They have no vision and unke toh kursi hi dost hain (the chair is the friend) and to attain that they can go to any extent,” he added.

    They have entered into alliances with the sole motive of coming to power. In West Bengal, they have entered into alliance with the Left and in  Kerala they are fighting against them, he said to drive home the point.