GUWAHATI, April 17 � Late Nagendra Narayan Das was the first Assamese to contest the Presidential election of the country. He contested the second Presidential election of the country held on May 6, 1957.
However, in the contest that involved three candidates, including the first President of the country Dr Rajendra Prasad, Das came out third.
Noted writer Kumudeswar Hazarika told this correspondent that Das was a former Additional Commissioner of Textile of the State, who resigned from his post due to his difference of opinion with his seniors in 1947.
The Election Commission of India information have it that the Electoral College of that Presidential election consisted of the elected members of Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and 14 State Legislative Assemblies. Each Member of Parliament had 496 votes and the number of votes for each Member of the State Legislative Assemblies differed from State to State on the basis of the population.
The lowest value of votes was for the MLAs of Jammu & Kashmir State (59) and the highest value of votes was for the MLAs of Uttar Pradesh (147). The value of votes was calculated on the basis of 1951 census.
According to the Election Commission of India information, Dr Rajendra Prasad was re-elected in the 1957 election with 4,59,698 votes. Chowdhury Hari Ram got 2,672 votes and Nagendra Narayan Das got 2,000 votes.
Das contested the Presidential election challenging the �hegemonic� rule of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. With this avowed approach, he published a leaflet too.
One of his sons � Abin Kumar Das, who is now a top official of a multinational company based in Mumbai � was Das� polling agent, Hazarika said.
Das was married to late Chandra Prabha Das, the eldest daughter of late Manik Chandra Choudhury of Uzanbazar, who was a renowned actor as well as a tea planter.
The Das couple had nine issues, five of them being sons and four being daughters.
After the Presidential election, Das, who hailed from Pachania in the undivided Goalpara district and stayed on the west bank of the Bharalu here, shifted to Maniktola in Kolkata and died there on April 28,1969.
Businessman candidate: In 1991, there was a funny development during the Assembly election of the State with one prominent businessman of the city offering his candidature as an independent candidate for the East Guwahati seat, being tired with the demands for �donations� from the other candidates for nearly two decades.
The businessman told his close circles that even those who could hardly secure 20 votes used to torment him for hefty �donations�.
Therefore, he devised a tactic to refuse the candidates by offering his own candidature for the East Guwahati seat.
Initially, the businessman resorted to door-to-door campaigns seeking votes. But later on, he employed 10 to 15 daily wage earners to campaign for him. Those people were provided with a truck, decorated with banners. They were asked to shout slogans exhorting the voters to vote for the businessman.
But the most ludicrous part of this story was that those people had no idea of the boundary of the East Guwahati Constituency. They were often seen campaigning in the other three constituencies of the city � Dispur, West Guwahati and Jalukbari.
However, the candidate could garner an honourable size of vote and his security amount was not forfeited.
After the election, the businessman was found very happy. For, according to him, he could save more than half of the amount he earlier used to cough up as �donations� to the other candidates, Hazarika said.