The four primary candidates for the upcoming Nagaon bypoll are a disparate lot: a recently retired IAS officer making his poll debut, the head of a regional outfit trying to revive the party’s fortunes, a former legislator seeking another electoral glory and a retired college vice-principal attempting a political launch.
They go against each other for the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat in Assam on October 6, marking the first electoral battle in the northeastern state. This follows the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies winning a one-sided victory in the assembly polls in April this year, securing 102 of the 126 seats. Seventy-year-old Ajmal formed AIUDF in 2005 with an eye on the sizeable vote bank of the Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state. From 2006 to 2021, the party won anywhere between 10 to 18 seats in the assembly polls. It also won 1-3 Lok Sabha seats from 2009 to 2019. But the party’s fortunes are dipping–it failed to win any seat in 2024 general election and bagged just two in the assembly polls this year.
He later won from the Dispur assembly seat on a BJP ticket in the April assembly polls. The perfume baron who won the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat thrice and represents the Binnakandi seat in the present state assembly, is seeking a revival of sorts for himself and his party. Because the Batadrava seat was abolished after the 2023 delimitation and became the Nagaon-Batadrava seat, bora didn’t contest the 2026 assembly polls.
The entry of heavyweights into the fray has made the battle noteworthy. The Nagaon seat fell vacant in March this year after the sitting Congress MP, Pradyut Bordoloi resigned from the party and joined the BJP. A former government officer, Bora has a political lineage. Her husband, Kiran Bora, represented the Batadrava seat and she is the daughter-in-law of Golap Borbora, Assam’s first non-Congress chief minister. The fourth candidate in the fray is Abdul Salam, a professor and retired vice-principal of Dhing College, who was given the party ticket by Trinamool Congress (TMC). “Nagaon has been represented by many parties over the years, but the basic problems of the constituency have not improved.
We are confident that Salam will win and address those issues effectively,” said TMC MLA, Sherman Ali Ahmed.
Since this is the first time both ruling and opposition parties return to the poll battle after the assembly polls earlier this year, the Nagaon bye-election is seen as an interesting contest. On Tuesday, a day ahead of filing of nominations ending, the AIUDF president, Badruddin Ajmal, entered the Nagaon poll fray.
