GUWAHATI: Naba Kumar Sarania has officially entered the race for the Valmiki Nagar parliamentary constituency as a candidate from the Gana Suraksha Party.
Having filed his nomination on May 6, his application has now been accepted. Sarania, 55, hails from Charangabari in the Tamulpur area of Baksa district, Assam.
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Sarania, who is a sitting Lok Sabha MP from the Kokrajhar (ST) constituency in Assam, could not contest this year from there after he lost his Scheduled Tribe status.
Last month, Gauhati High Court dismissed a petition filed by Sarania, challenging the order of the State-Level Caste Scrutiny committee (SLSC) that he does not belong to Bodo/Bodo Kachari community, which is a recognised ST (Plains) community in Assam. They revoked the ST certificate issued to two-term Lok Sabha member Sarania, in 2011.
The court held that it found no ‘illegality or impropriety’ in the SLSC's order. Furthermore, the court also pointed out that Sarania's father never asserted belonging to the Bodo/Bodo Kachari community.
The SLSC's decision was followed by another order issued by Assam’s Department of Tribal Affairs (Plains) on January 20, which invalidated the caste certificate originally issued by the Assam Tribal Sangha, Tamulpur district unit, in October 2011.