Voters in a polling station in Rangia on Thursday.
GUWAHATI: As the second phase of polling ended on Thursday, the Mahajot seemed confident about doing well in Rangia. In 2016, the BJP had won the seat by winning over 40% of the votes.
Rangia has around 60,000 Muslim voters who form 30% of the electorate. Right from the first election in 1951, it had oscillated between the Congress and the Left parties, with the Congress winning the seat in 2011. This time, the Mahajot has fielded popular doctor Bhagwan Dev Misra of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
“Our victory is certain in Rangia. People are fed up with the BJP because of corruption charges, inability to prevent erosion by Puthimari river, and failure to revive the APOL textile mill, which was a household name once,” said Deven Bhattacharya, Assam state secretary of CPI (M). He felt that BJP’s “Hindutva politics” will cost it the seat.
Politics is my life, says 49-year-old Marimuthu, who lives in a thatched house Amidst a flock of affluent candidates contesting the April 6 Assembly election in Tamil Nadu, K. Marimuthu, the candidate of the Communist Party of India (CPI) for the Thiruthuraipoondi (Reserved) constituency in Tiruvarur district, stands out in stark contrast.
The 49-year-old political activist, who lives in a thatched house in Kaduvakudi, has spent over half his life as a full-time party worker fighting for public causes. His wife, Jayasudha, is an agricultural labourer. Mr. Marimuthu, who was born into a family of poor agricultural labourers belonging to a Scheduled Caste, makes light of his economic condition. “Politics is my life, and I have no other vocation. My wife is into agriculture, and we cultivate land taken on lease. We get by with whatever we have,” says Mr. Marimuthu, whose two children are in high school.
The Communist Party of India (CPI), a constituent of the Congress-led Secular Democratic Alliance, was earmarked the Thattanchavady segment here to field its candidate in the April 6 Assembly poll. An agreement was inked in this regard between the Puducherry PCC president A V Subramanian and the secretary of the Puducherry unit of CPI A M Saleem at the PCC office here on Sunday, a press release from the PCC president said. The Congress and DMK have already been earmarked 15 and 13 seats respectively to field their candidates through an accord reached on Saturday. The Union Territory has totally 30 seats and the CPI has now been allotted Thattanchavady seat.
Prithiraj Rava submitted his nomination earlier this week.
GUWAHATI: Asom Gana Parishad has taken a leap of faith by fielding Prithiraj Rava instead of Brindaban Goswami from Tezpur. Rava is the son of cultural icon and communist revolutionary Bishnu Prasad Rava, and AGP hopes that he will do well at the hustings riding on the aura of his late father.
Bishnu Rava had spent many years underground as a leader of Revolutionary Communist Party of India before joining Communist Party of India in 1950s. In 1967, he contested the assembly elections as an Independent and won. He was a lifelong socialist.
Including the CPI, the M K Stalin-led Dravidian party has concluded poll pacts with four of its allies so far and an understanding with the Marxist party is expected soon.