Close fight expected in Tezpur as D-day nears

The first phase of Lok Sabha (LS) election in Assam on 11th April will see five constituencies go to poll. Voters from Tezpur, Kaliabor, Lakhimpur, Jorhat and Dibrugarh will get a chance to elect their representatives. It looks like the Tezpur LS constituency will have a two-cornered fight between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Congress candidate for the Tezpur Lok Sabha constituency is former bureaucrat-turned-politician MGVK Bhanu and the BJP candidate is Rangapara MLA and cabinet minister Pallab Lochan Das. The BJP definitely has an edge in Tezpur but it is not going to be an easy win.

Ugly exchanges have already appeared in the media where some of the BJP leaders have started calling Bhanu names. This gives a sense that there is some amount of surprise element surrounding the former bureaucrat which the BJP either fears or is trying to bring out. Even the full name of MGVK Bhanu has become the talk of the town, thanks to a few BJP leaders. These comments and statements indicate that the BJP is trying to provoke or get him angry. Bhanu is known for being strict and is also famous for his temper. A small blunder or slip of tongue from him can be used by the BJP to ruin his prospects. He is already being touted as an outsider and a person who can’t speak Assamese well. But all said and done, the senior bureaucrat does not seem to be biting the bait at the moment. All he has been replying is that one should not use un-parliamentary language against opponents and one should respect the seniors and elderly. Smart move there! Earlier, the BJP candidate Pallab Lochan Das took a jibe on retired Bhanu by comparing him with an old ox. Das further stated that a person who crosses the age of 60 is entitled to old-age pension. This comment has not been taken well by a section of Tezpur voters. Well, everything is fair in love and war and by the time this paper goes to print Bhanu fans have already come up with a creative where MGVK has been given a different meaning (check creative below).

Now coming back to numbers, in the last Lok Sabha election in 2014, BJP candidate Ram Prasad Sarmah won the seat by a margin of 86,020 votes over his Congress rival Bhupen Kumar Borah. BJP candidate Sarmah received 4,46,511 votes against Borah's 3,60,491 votes. There was no alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) during the 2014 general elections. The AGP candidate, Joseph Toppo (winner of 2009), was fourth with 40,489 votes. Also, the Congress vote share got cut by former Congress heavyweight Moni Kumar Subba who, on being denied a party ticket, stood as an independent candidate. Subba received 62,730 votes. This time in 2019, with no Subba in the fray and a coalition with the AGP, things look easy on paper for BJP's candidate Pallab Lochan Das. Including the lone AGP MLA from Tezpur, Brindavan Goswami, the BJP-AGP has all the 9 MLAs in the Lok Sabha constituency.

But the road to success is laid with end number of permutations and combinations in this land of Jyoti Prasad Agarwala and Bishnu Rabha. There has been some amount of discontentment brewing among the Gorkha/Nepali voters who have been sending a representative from their community since 1991. The seat was first won by Congress candidate Swarup Upadhyay (belonging to Nepali community) in 1991 and then by Moni Kumar Subba (Congress) who won the seat three times (1998, 1999 and 2004). The BJP has been successful just once when RP Sarmah (belonging to Nepali community) won the seat in 2014. That does not mean that the seat is a designated Gorkha/Nepali seat. The unceremonious departure of RP Sarmah just sends a message across the community that they don’t have a representation anymore. Assam has around 25 lakh Gorkha/Nepali voters spread across the state and this issue might be used against the BJP on the eve of voting by Congress supporters belonging to the community.

There are chances of negative voting in Tezpur from both the Nepali and the tea tribe communities. The Nepali voters (around 2.4 lakhs) had been the supporters of Congress and then shifted to BJP en masse in 2014 and 2016. As they don't have a good community candidate this time, barring a lesser-known Krishna Bahadur Sunar from Nationalist People's Party (NPP), some of these 2.4 lakh voters might abstain or vote for the Congress just to drive a point home. Sentiments cannot be gauged till the button on the EVM is pressed.  
 
The tea gardens comprise around 2.74 lakh voters in the Tezpur Lok Sabha seat. Pallab Lochan Das won the Behali (2011) and then the Rangapara assembly constituency in (2016). Both these assembly constituencies have a majority of tea garden voters. 

Though the gardens are mostly dominated by the BJP, the Congress and Communist parties still have a sizeable vote share through trade unions. Bhanu has raised an issue of tea garden labourers’ daily wages and has put the blame on the BJP government and Pallab Lochan Das for stalling the increase. It is not easy to convince the tea garden workers when it comes to daily wages. There are around one lakh Hindu Bengali voters and around 1.6 lakh Bodo voters in the Tezpur Lok Sabha constituency. Like the Gorkha voters, these voters had mostly voted for the BJP in the last general elections. This year too, the BJP should expect to get a good share of these votes.

The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) has not put up any candidate from Tezpur. This leaves the Bengali-speaking Muslims (around 2.36 lakh) who have always been traditional Congress voters to come out and vote for the Congress.
 
Tezpur has a vibrant political environment and the voters are well-educated in the craft of electoral politics. The decisive factor this time is the Assamese speaking voters who are around 3.5 lakh. With no Modi wave this time, for those without any party affiliation, neither MGVK Bhanu nor Pallab Lochan Das would matter. This community has been waiting and watching everything starting from issues like NRC to Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 to the dirty politics that is being played in the name of their safety and security. It is these 3.5 lakh indigenous Assamese voters who will at the end decide whether they want an old retired ox or a green-horn to represent this prestigious seat in the north bank. 

Tezpur has 1,880 polling stations and has a total of 14,82,368 voters