14 candidates in fray across three Darrang LACs; over 7.17 lakh voters to decide fate

Mangaldai, March 31: The battle in the EVMs for April 9 next is all set for the three Assembly segments – Sipajhar, Mangaldai and Dalgaon – under the Darrang election district, with altogether 14 candidates in the fray.

The political fate of these candidates will now be decided by as many as 7,17,540 electors through 907 polling stations across the district.

If one looks into the figures of different age groups, one will see that there are 10,880 (1.5%) fresh voters.

However, the maximum 29% (2,08,534) component of the total vote share is consisted of the voters in the age group of 20-29 years.

There are 53 centenarian voters; among them one is above 120 years of age.

Meanwhile, out of the three sitting MLAs, Paramananda Rajbongshi (Sipajhar, BJP) and Mazibur Rahman (Dalgaon, AIUDF) have retained their party tickets in their respective constituencies.

However, sitting MLA in Mangaldai seat Basanta Das, who shifted to BJP from Congress, was denied ticket due to the changing political equation following dereservation of the seat.

In Sipajhar, apart from the sitting MLA, former three-time MLA from the constituency, Binanda Kumar Saikia (Congress) along with Mun Kumar Deka (SUCI-C) and Harajyoti Buddha (Ind) are also in the fray.

In 2021 elections, BJP candidate Rajbongshi won by a margin of nearly 7,000 votes. This time the constituency has a total of 2,01,883 voters, out of which 1,03,050 are male and 98,829 are female.

The Mangaldai LAC, which will go to polls for the first time following dereservation after long 34 years since 1991, has six candidates in the fray.

They are Nilima Devi (BJP), Rijumoni Talukdar (Congress), Azizur Rahman (AIUDF), Harekrishna Deka (TMC), Ajit Acharya (SUCI-C) and Prabin Kumar Deka (Ind).

Notably, all the candidates are new faces for the voters of the constituency. Mangaldai has a total of 2,00,373 electors.

In the last election Basanta Das, contesting in a Congress ticket, defeated his rival BJP candidate Gurujyoti Das by a margin of around 24,000 votes.

However, following the delimitation exercises, both the geographical and demographic scenarios have changed.

This could be evident from the results of the last Lok Sabha elections where the BJP earned more than 96,000 votes against around 58,000 votes recorded in favour of the Congress.

In Dalgaon, in addition to sitting MLA Mazibur Rahman (AIUDF), three others will contest the polls – Krishna Saha (BJP), Azizur Rahman (Raijor Dal) and Aynul Hoque (Ind).

This time, the Congress has not fielded any candidate of its own but extended support to the Raijor Dal candidate under the pre-poll seat-sharing understanding.

This has reportedly led the dissident faction to project one of the party ticket aspirants, Aynul Hoque, as an independent candidate. The constituency recorded the highest number of electors in the State, at 3,15,284.