The Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency in Assam will witness a close contest between three candidates — Sarbananda Sonowal, Lurinjyoti Gogoi and Manoj Dhanowar.
The Bharatiya Janata Party may claim its candidate, Sonowal, will win by a huge margin but the opposition-supported Lurinjyoti Gogoi is putting up a tough fight and the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Manoj Dhanowar is also not lagging behind.
Dibrugarh is considered one of the most economically important constituencies in the state with the highest number of tea gardens, oil and gas public sector undertakings, fertilisers, petrochemicals, gas cracker plant and coal fields.
It has a diverse population with the predominant being the Assamese, comprising Ahoms, Morans, Chutias, Muttocks, Sonowal-Kacharis, Mishings and the general caste, followed by tea tribes, Hindu Bengalis, Assamese Muslims, Christians and Buddhists.
The candidates and their supporters are going all out to woo the over 16.50 lakh electorate, with women marginally outnumbering the male voters, in the ten assembly segments of the constituency going to polls in the first phase on April 19.
“We are focusing on development initiated during the last 10 years by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the region — particularly the completion of the Bogibeel and the Dhola-Sadiya bridge which has led to immense potentialities in my constituency,” Sonowal told reporters while campaigning in different areas spread over the two districts of Tinsukia and Dibrugarh.
Countering Sonowal’s claim, the opposition-supported candidate Lurinjyoti Gogoi told the media that the ruling BJP has “always neglected” the people of Assam and that the so-called development is merely cosmetic.
“The biggest betrayal of the BJP government is the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) even when the indigenous people of Assam had protested against it but they are continuing to burden the state with additional foreigners,” Gogoi, who belongs to the Ahom community, said.
AAP candidate Manoj Dhanowar, son of eight-time Congress MLA and former minister Rameshwar Dhanowar, is a member of the tea community and is banking on their votes which the other two contestants also claim are in their favour.
Dibrugarh is also an educational hub with a University and a Medical College along with several other educational institutions and a high literacy rate of over 75 per cent.
Among the candidates, Sonowal has a law and journalism degree, Gogoi is a post-graduate in mathematics and Dhanowar is an engineer.
Dibrugarh was a traditional Congress bastion since independence till 2004 when Sonowal created history by wresting the seat as an Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) candidate from four-time Congress MP Paban Singh Ghatowar but lost to him again in 2009.
Teli, a minister in Modi’s outgoing cabinet, had won the seat for two consecutive terms since 2014 but was replaced by Sonowal as a contestant in the ensuing polls.
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