Assam: BJP’s Karimganj ticket to Kripanath Mallah evokes mixed reactions

Suklabaidya confident of victory

A Correspondent

Silchar: Though he was initially reluctant to contest the general election, state minister Parimal Suklabaidya, whose name was declared as the candidate for the Silchar seat by the BJP, now expressed gratitude to the party for keeping faith in him.

Speaking to this correspondent, Suklabaidya, the Assam Transport and Excise Minister, said it was now his responsibility to ‘gift’ the prestigious Silchar seat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The outgoing MP, Dr. Rajdeep Roy, and Silchar MLA, Dipayan Chakrabarty, said that they would once again win this seat by a minimum margin of two lakhs.

The BJP’s ticket to Kripanath Mallah for the Karimganj seat, however, evoked mixed responses both at the party level as well as amongst the common Bengali Hindus. Mallah, an MP, belongs to the SC community. Karimganj seat was dereserved, whereas Silchar was reserved for SC candidates in the recent delimitation exercise. The general expectations in the Bengali-speaking Barak Valley were that the BJP would nominate a candidate from the general caste, Bengali. However, in both seats, the ruling party fielded candidates belonging to the SC community. Mallah, who started his electoral career as a Congress MLA from Ratabari, was known for his proximity to Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and joined the BJP when the latter left the Congress in 2016. Mallah was made the Deputy Speaker in the Assembly, and later he won the Lok Sabha election from Karimganj, which was then a reserved seat. This time, Mallah’s name was not even doing the rounds in the party circle. However, the Chief Minister, in his last Friday visit to Ramakrishna Nagar for the ‘bhoomi puja’ of the Karimganj Medical College, dropped ample hints that Mallah would once again be handpicked for the big game. Mallah too was confident, as he said that if he were made the candidate, the BJP would have a big chance to retain the seat that had two lakh more Muslim votes than that of the Hindus in post-delimitation. “I have equally worked in the Muslim areas and will definitely poll a minimum of one lakh votes in those areas. Muslim votes, on the other hand, will be divided between the Congress and the AIUDF, and the BJP will reap the  benefit,” Mallah explained. Senior BJP leader Mission Ranjan Das, who was a forerunner for the Karimganj Lok Sabha seat, openly said the decision made him upset. “I did not apply on my own. I was asked to start working for the election, and I did. I shouldn’t have been assured like this only to be disheartened,” a frustrated Das told the mediapersons.

However, he made it clear that he was in the BJP since the party registered its first success in 1991, and he was elected to the Assembly, and in the future too, he would remain a dedicated party worker.

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