Women candidates take centre stage in Mangaldai electoral battle
With six new candidates in the fray, Mangaldai heads into a closely watched contest, as BJP and Congress emerge as key contenders following major changes
Rijumoni Talukdar (left), Nilima Devi (right). (AT Photo)
Mangaldai, April 7: Mangaldai is an important Assembly constituency in Central Assam. The constituency was reserved for the Scheduled Castes in 1991 at the time of the 9th Assam Assembly elections.
Thus after 34 years, the constituency was freed from reservation. Altogether six candidates are contesting the election in the constituency – Nilima Devi of BJP, Rijumoni Talukdar of the Congress, Azizur Rahman (AIUDF), Harekrishna Deka (TMC), Ajit Acharya (SUCI-Communist) and Independent candidate Prabin Kumar Deka.
All these candidates are new faces for the voters of the constituency. They have been using various tactics to reach out to the voters in the past ten days or so but the candidates of the two major political parties – Nilima Devi of BJP and Rijumoni Talukdar of Congress – are much ahead of the others in the election campaign .
The star campaigners of the BJP, including Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, BJP national president Nitin Nabin and State president Dilip Saikia already took part in the election rallies in the constituency. The BJP candidate Nilima Devi has been carrying out marathon campaigns day and night to woo voters with help of the party’s workers from the district and Mandal-level to the grassroots booth levels.
On the other hand, till the filing of this report, people here haven’t witnessed any star campaigner of the Congress party taking part in the election campaign for Rijumoni Talukdar. Talukdar though is not sitting idle and has not left any stone unturned to come closer to the voters.
Instead of holding big election meetings, Talukdar has been trying hard to win the hearts of the voters by visiting the nooks and corners of the constituency, holding small rallies, visiting religious institutions or going from house to house, etc.
The last delimitation exercises resulted in bringing some changes in the geopolitical scenario of the constituency.
As per the recent electoral data, the total number of voters in the constituency figured at 2,01,732, out of which 1,11,740 are male and 99,989 are female voters.
According to the local political analysts, from the demographic point of view, the constituency consisted of 1,22,000 Hindus and around 30,000 of linguistic minority community.
On the other hand, there are nearly 78,000 voters of the Muslim community which includes the religious minority community.
The results of the 2021 Assembly elections showed that the Congress candidate Basanta Das won the seat by securing 1,11,386 votes against 87,320 votes earned by the BJP candidate Gurujyoti Das.
However, the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, held following the delimitation, showed a much improved performance by the BJP candidate. The BJP candidate secured 96,213 votes while the Congress candidate had to remain satisfied with 58,288 votes.
Meanwhile, though all the six contesting candidates of the constituency have been making efforts to get the people’s mandate on April 9, it is certain that the main poll battle will be confined to the BJP and the Congress.