GUWAHATI, March 18 - The ruling BJP has �finalized� its candidates for eight of the Lok Sabha constituencies of Assam, while the nominees for Tezpur and Nagaon seats are yet to be decided.
State BJP president Ranjeet Kumar Dass today said the names for eight constituencies were decided at the meeting of the party�s central election committee held in New Delhi on March 16.
�...at the meeting candidates for eight constituencies were decided upon and for two other seats no final decision was taken... Tezpur and Nagaon were kept pending,� he said.
�However, till our party�s national president puts his signature on the list we will have to assume that no names have been finalized. The list is final only after the party president signs it,� Dass added.
He said the name of State Finance Minister and NEDA convenor Himanta Biswa Sarma was withdrawn from the panel to allow him to concentrate on the party�s election efforts in the Northeast. Sarma�s name had figured in the panel for the Tezpur constituency.
Dass added that panels for all the constituencies forwarded by the party�s State election committee had contained multiple names. He said that the name of Tezpur sitting MP RP Sharma was in the panel for that constituency.
Asked about the recent comments by Sharma regarding his alleged exclusion from the panel, Dass said, �He (Sharma) is not a member of the election committee. The committee did not submit its list to him. The list was submitted to the national president of our party.�
Meanwhile, sources in the State BJP said on condition of anonymity that the party has decided to renominate sitting MPs Rameswar Teli in Dibrugarh and Pradan Baruah in Lakhimpur. In addition, the names of Dilip Saikia for Mangaldai, Queen Oja for Guwahati, Topon Kumar Gogoi for Jorhat, Haren Sing Bey for Diphu, Dr Rajdeep Roy for Silchar and Kripanath Mallah for Karimganj have been finalized, sources added.
The BJP will be contesting from 10 out of the 14 seats in Assam, while three seats (Barpeta, Dhubri and Kaliabor) have been left for its alliance partner AGP and one (Kokrajhar) for BPF.
