The Congress on Tuesday released its first list of 42 candidates for the upcoming elections to the 126-member Assam Assembly, becoming the first party in the state to start announcing its candidates.
Gaurav Gogoi, state unit president of the party and deputy leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, will contest the election from Jorhat. The Assembly segment is one of the ten segments that make up the Jorhat Lok Sabha seat it represents in Parliament.
State Assembly elections are expected to be held in April.
Apart from Gogoi, other prominent faces in the Congress list are former state unit chief Ripun Bora who will contest from Barshala and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Debabrata Saikia, who will contest from the Nazira family stronghold.
Nandita Das, an MLA from the reserved seat of Boko, was appointed from the Hajo-Sualkuchi seat, also reserved for Scheduled Castes candidates. Meera Borthakur Goswami, president of the party’s women’s wing, has been appointed from the Dispur seat.
The Congress party, which is in talks with several opposition parties to form an alliance against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, had earlier announced that it would contest 100 seats.
The state elections will be a test of how far a united opposition can break the BJP’s ten-year grip on the northeast
The announcement comes amid a bitter war of words between the Congress party and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has targeted Gaurav Gogoi, son of three-term former Prime Minister Tarun Gogoi, alleging that Gaurav and his British wife Elizabeth, who was first posted in Pakistan and later in India as a representative of the Climate Action Group, have ties to Pakistani intelligence.
Gogoi denied the allegations and termed it a smear campaign aimed at diverting attention from governance issues.
