Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The Nagaon Parliamentary Constituency seems to be evenly poised, leading to a triangular contest among the BJP, the Congress, and the AIUDF. Among these three vertices of the triangle, the votes of the religious minority community seem to be the deciding factor.
From 1999 to 2014, BJP candidate Rajen Gohain had been winning this Lok Sabha seat. In 2019, the Congress wrested this seat from the BJP.
The contest is among Pradyut Bordoloi of the Congress, Suresh Borah of the BJP, and Aminul Islam of the AIUDF. The parliamentary constituency, with eight assembly segments, has around 17.16 lakh electors. The delimitation exercise brought drastic changes to the Assembly segments in this parliamentary constituency. The stronghold of the BJP with a larger Hindu Bengali population, Hojai, and Lumding Assembly segments have been added to the Kaziranga Lok Sabha constituency, former Kaliabor LS constituency. On the contrary, Samaguri, Nagaon-Bhatadrava, Dhing, etc., of the former Kaliabor LS seat have been included in the Nagaon LS seat.
The eight Assembly segments with the highest percentage of religious minority population in Nagaon LS seat are: 88 percent in Samaguri, 94 percent in Rupahihat, 92 percent in Dhing, 91 percent in Lahorighat, and around 20–30 percent in each of Nagaon, Raha, Batadrava, and Jagoriad.
In 2009, the main contenders in this Lok Sabha seat were the BJP, the Congress, and the AIUDF. The BJP got 38 percent, Congress got 33 percent, and the AIUDF got 24 percent of the votes in that year.
In 2014, the main contenders were from these three parties, with the BJP getting 40.1 percent, Congress getting 28.4 percent, and the AIUDF getting 25.5 percent of the votes.
However, in 2019, the fight was straight between Pradyut Bordoloi of the Congress and Rupak Sarma of the BJP. The AIUDF opted not to field any candidates and supported the Congress. The Congress won the seat, polling 49.5 percent of the votes.
The ground situation remains such that Pradyut Bordoloi of the Congress is facing the wrath of the anti-incumbency. As if to cap it all, the AIUDF fielding its candidate in the constituency is set to cut the votes of the minority community.
Despite a BJP wave surging in the state, the problem with the BJP’s candidate, Suresh Borah, is that the chances of winning with only non-minority votes are slim. And this has made the BJP enter religious minority-dominated areas in a massive way, a development that has hurt the sentiment of a section of the non-minority population to an extent.
Sitting MLA and AIUDF candidate Aminul Islam, on the other hand, cannot make it to certain minority-dominated areas. Thus, the chances of the party keeping the percentage of votes (around 25 percent) it got in the 2009 and 2014 parliamentary polls intact are slim.
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