Digital Desk: Among the nine significant constituencies that will be the focus of the next Lok Sabha elections in Assam are Dibrugarh and Jorhat. 

 

In Dibrugarh, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will face Lurinjyoti Gogoi of the Assam Jatiya Parishad, while BJP MP Topon Gogoi will face Gaurav Gogoi, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Parliament. 

 

The elections will be held in three phases on April 19, 26 and May 7.

There are 14 Lok Sabha constituencies in Assam; the BJP holds nine, the Congress three, and the AIUDF and an independent one seat each in the outgoing house.

All 14 of the state's constituencies are being contested by the NDA alliance. While its partners Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) will run in two seats and the United Peoples' Party Liberal (UPPL) in one, the BJP has announced candidates for eleven seats. 

 

The AJP has been designated as the winner of the Dibrugarh seat by the Congress, which is one of the 16 parties that make up the United Opposition Forum Assam (UOFA). Regarding the Lakhimpur seat, no decision has been made as of yet. 

 

The key seats identified in Assam are Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Kaziranga, Guwahati, Dhubri, Sonitpur, Nagaon, Barpeta, and Silchar.

The summarizes of the nine constitutions are shown here. 

 

1. Dibrugarh: Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal is the BJP's nominee for this economically important seat, which features oil wells and tea gardens. He will face the unanimous choice of UOFA, Lurinjyoti Gogoi of the AJP. Both Sonowal, a former chief minister, and Gogoi are former office-bearers of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU). Union Minister Rameswar Teli, who won the 2019 election by more than three lakh votes, has been replaced by Sonowal, the first non-Congress candidate to win the seat as an AGP candidate in 2004. As the AASU General Secretary, Gogoi led the 2019 anti-CAA demonstrations. He then founded the AJP and served as its first president.

2. Jorhat: Topon Gogoi, the current Member of Parliament for the BJP, will face off against Gaurav Gogoi (Congress), the deputy leader of the opposition in the departing legislature. After serving as the neighboring Kaliabor (now known as Kaziranga due to the delimitation exercise) seat twice since 2014, Gaurav has been moved. 

 

3. Kaziranga: Two candidates from the tea tribal community will primarily compete for this seat, which was designated as such during the delimitation procedure last year. Roselina Tirkey, a former Sarupathar Congress MLA, will face off against Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, the state spokesperson for the BJP and a member of the Rajya Sabha.

4. Guwahati: Two female candidates from the BJP and Congress will compete for this esteemed seat, which serves as the Gateway to the North East. While the Congress nominated spokeswoman Mira Borthakur Goswami, the BJP substituted state party vice president Bijuli Kalita Medhi for incumbent MP Queen Ojha. Both parties had female candidates for the seat in 2019. Since 2009, when Bijoya Chakravarty of the BJP was elected, it has been represented by women.

 

5. Dhubri: AIUDF president Badruddin Ajmal is running for the Lok Sabha for a fourth term in a minority-dominated constituency. However, there will be a triangular contest in Dhubri, with the Congress fielding former minister and current Samaguri MLA Rakibul Hussain and the NDA alliance fielding AGP's Zaved Islam. 

 

6. Nagaon: Pradyut Bordoloi, the Congress MP now serving in the region, is expected to face fierce competition from Suresh Bora, a close ally who recently switched to the BJP.

 

7. Sonitpur: Located on the North Bank of the Brahmaputra, Sonitpur is a constituency with a varied population makeup. State General Secretary Prem Lal Ganju of the Congress received a ticket from the Congress, while Behali MLA Ranjit Dutta received one from the BJP. For the first time, Ganju and Dutta, both ministers in the Sonowal administration, will run in the Lok Sabha elections. 

 

8. Silchar: During the delimitation process last year, Sidchar, one of the two Barak Valley constituencies, was designated as a Scheduled Caste constituency. The CAA is welcomed by the significant Hindu Bengali population there. Entire Congress youth leader and district general secretary Surjya Kanta Sarkar and veteran BJP leader and Assam's Excise, Transport and Fisheries Minister Parimal Suklabaidya will compete for the important seat.

 

 9. Barpeta: Previously a predominantly minority area, the delimitation effort involved reworking the constituency's assembly parts and realigning the population. Thus, Deep Bayan, the head of Assam Pradesh Seva Dal, succeeded incumbent MP Abdul Khaleque in the Congress, while Phanibhushan Choudhury, a former minister of the NDA, would run for the seat. Manoranjan Kalita, the MLA for Sorbhog in the UOFA, has declared that she will run for the seat from the CPI(M).