Assam: Major blunder in LS constituencies' names while announcing BJP candidates

Guwahati, Mar 3: Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced the names of its candidates who will contest for 11 seats in Assam. However, the saffron party made a huge mistake in the constituencies' names.

In August 2023, the Election Commission of India (ECI) published the final delimitation order for 19 Parliamentary and 126 Assembly constituencies in Assam. The poll body said that 19 Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats have been set aside for Scheduled Tribes (STs), while Scheduled Castes (SCs) have been given one Lok Sabha and nine Assembly seats.

As per the final order, SC Assembly seats were increased from eight to nine, while ST Assembly seats went up from 16 to 19. Moreover, the seats in the Bodoland area had also been increased by the poll panel in the delimitation proposal.

According to the ECI statement, one Parliamentary and some Assembly constituencies were given "paired names" such as Darrang-Udalgiri, Hajo-Sualkuchi, Boko-Chaygaon, Nagaon-Batadraba, Bhowanipur-Sorbhog, and Algapur-Katlichera, in view of the demand from the public.

While announcing the names of the candidates who will contest in 11 seats, the BJP made a major blunder while assigning the constituencies, raising questions of whether they are aware of the structure, reservation and new names of the constituencies that have changed after the delimitation process.

In the list of candidates announced by the saffron party, the BJP stated Karimganj Lok Sabha constituency as reserved, while Silchar has been shown as unreserved. However, after the delimitation process, only Silchar constituency is reserved for the Scheduled Caste, while Karimganj is unreserved.

In a similar way, there is no constituency in Assam called Mangaldoi and Tezpur Lok Sabha constituencies, as following the delimitation process, the name of the constituency was changed to Darrang-Udalguri and Sonitpur constituencies. The BJP named Dilip Saikia and Ranjit Dutta as candidates for Mangaldoi and Tezpur LS constituencies.

Meanwhile, the Kaliabor Lok Sabha constituency was completely abolished and a new Kaziranga Lok Sabha constituency was formed. The name of the candidate for Kaziranga Lok Sabha constituency is not included in the BJP's list of candidates, however, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa was named as the candidate for the Kaliabor Lok Sabha constituency.

The matter has raised several questions of whether the party is aware of the constituencies’ names while choosing candidates.

The following is the list of candidates announced by BJP for Lok Sabha elections: