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Mahanta
out to ‘finish’ Bora in battle royale
Samudra Gupta
Kashyap
Guwahati,
April 29: Dispur in Assam is set to witness one of the most
fiercely-contested fights in these elections as Chief Minister P.K.
Mahanta gets ready to settle scores with friend-turned-foe Atul
Bora of the Trinamul Gana Parishad and take on traditional rivals
Congress.
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Congress candidate
Captain Robin Bordoloi at home. Express photo by Manoj
Kumar Deka
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It’s not
hard to conclude that the AGP president would like to eliminate
Bora from politics, if possible once and for all. Bora was the party
general secretary through the thick and the thin until the former
PWD minister revolted after Mahanta reshuffled his ministry in May
1998.
Adding colour to the contest is the Congress though its campaign
has been low-key till now. Its candidate, Captain Robin Bordoloi,
is the son of Gopinath Bordoloi, Assam’s first chief minister.
‘‘Dispur used to be known as the Sonapur constituency
at the time of Independence, and it was my father who represented
it,’’ says Captain Bordoloi, who is also playing up his
father’s name to attract voters.
Mahanta’s
home seat is Barhampur in Nagaon. But as always, he has been contesting
from two seats. Mahanta’s reasons to choose Dipsur are clear:
the Chief Minister and his government are most visible here —
several of his dream projects have been started here.
It includes the Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra, considered to
be the largest cultural complex in the country. AGP leaders say
if the Chief Minister is in Guwahati and not available in his office
or residence, he is most likely to be found at Kalakshetra.
Dispur has been with the AGP since 1985 and represented by Atul
Bora every time. The party secured 62 per cent votes in 1985, which
slid to 33.5 per cent in 1991 (there were 25 candidates in the fray).
In 1996, the AGP won back the confidence of voters to get 64.91
per cent votes.
Mahanta, however, remains unfazed with Bora’s winning streak
from the seat. ‘‘Those are not Bora’s private votes.
They belong to the AGP. The voters of Dispur had not asked him (Bora)
to quit the AGP,’’ says the Chief Minister.
Bora’s grouse while quitting the party was that a senior member
like him should have been consulted before the reshuffle. So when
Mahanta asked him to give up the PWD porfolio and take over the
Forest ministry, Bora not only quit to launch a new party but took
with him ex-Speaker Pulakesh Barua. Bora is the second seniormost
leader after former Home minister Bhrigu Kumar Phukan to have quit
the AGP and opposed Mahanta. This time, Bora tried to tie up with
Phukan. But, sources say, that Phukan refused to entertain him as
Bora is said to have caused rift between Mahanta and him.
Mahanta has the advantage of having the BJP as an ally. Even though
the party fared poorly well in Dispur (3.03 per cent in 1991 and
9.16 in 1996), it secured 64.36 per cent of the votes in the segment
when Bijoya Chakravarty won the Guwahati Lok Sabha seat in 1999.
And Mahanta has leaders such as L.K. Advani and A.B. Vajpayee to
campaign for him. Dismissing the threat from Bora, Mahanta says:
‘‘It is a fight between the AGP-BJP combine and the Congress.’’
Bora feels that Mahanta would be outright rejected by the voters
of Dispur: ‘‘I have been here for the past 15 years.Government
employees who constitute a major chunk of the electorate simply
do not want to hear Mahanta’s name.”
Akon Bora, general secretary of the APCC who has been denied a ticket
this time, has not only opposed captain Bordoloi’s candidature
but even initially resisted his entry into the party’s district
office.
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