D-Day is just days away as the stage is set for polling for the prestigious Guwahati Lok Sabha seat, on May 7.
GUWAHATI: The arena is all set for the Lok Sabha elections 2024 in Guwahati constituency and it is expected to be a direct fight between two women - Bharatiya Janata Party’s Bijuli Kalita Medhi and Congress’s Mira Borthakur. The constituency holds significant political weightage, with a huge eligible voters. It is a general seat, not reserved for Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe.
The constituency will have more than 100 all-women polling stations during the upcoming general elections, a senior official of Kamrup (Metro) district administration said. The official said that the constituency has more women voters than men. The Guwahati constituency, which will vote in the third phase on May 7, has 2,181 polling booths, spread across Kamrup Metropolitan, Kamrup and Goalpara districts.
Click here to join our WhatsApp channel
In 102 all-women polling stations, all the staff of these booths will be women. Besides, there will be 15 model polling stations in the constituency. In the Guwahati Lok Sabha seat, there are 10 Assembly constituencies -- five in Kamrup Metropolitan, three in Kamrup, and two in Goalpara. There are 20,19,444 voters -- 9,93,268 men, 10,26,118 women - and 58 third gender. Around 9,000 civil servants will be engaged during the polling exercise, besides a considerable number of security personnel.
Extra security forces will be deployed across the constituency to maintain the law and order situation, said a senior police official assuring “The polling will be peaceful in the constituency.”
Eight candidates are in the fray after nomination papers of two others were rejected.
The confirmed candidates represent a mix of major political parties, lesser-known entities, and independent candidates. In the final list are Bijuli Kalita Medhi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mira Borthakur Goswami of the Indian National Congress (INC), Samad Choudhury of the Bharatiya Gana Parishad (BGP), Shejon Goyary of the Bahujan Maha Party, Amitabh Sharma of the Ekam Sanatan Bharat Dal, Dipak Kumar Boro of the Voters Party International, independent candidates Kazi Nekib Ahmed, and Colonel Gokul Chandra Singha.
The direct fight is expected between Bijuli Kalita Medhi and Mira Borthakur. The first woman to win the seat was Renuka Devi Barkakati of the Janata Party in 1977. The second was BJP’s Bijoya Chakravarty, a former Union minister, in 1999. Chakravarty wrested the seat from Kirip Chaliha of Congress in 2009 and retained it in 2014 before the BJP replaced her with Queen Oja. In 2019, Queen Oja won the Guwahati seat with a margin of 345,606 votes against Congress candidate Bobbeeta Sharma.
After the massive road shows by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Guwahati, BJP has deployed four ministers to carry out aggressive campaigns in all 60 wards of the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) to support their debutant candidate, Bijuli Kalita Medhi, for the crucial Guwahati Lok Sabha constituency. The ministers — Finance Minister Ajanta Neog, Education Minister Ranoj Pegu, Industries and Commerce Minister Bimal Borah, and Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Jogen Mohan — held several public meetings in different GMC wards besides Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Medhi, who has been given the ticket by dropping the sitting MP Queen Oja, is contesting such a large-scale election for the first time. She has been pitted against Congress candidate Mira Borthakur, whom all the anti-BJP political parties have extended support and also carried out extensive campaigns across the constituency. Talking about the issues in Guwahati, Bijuli Kalita Medhi said, “The present issues will be resolved soon. We will see that in 2024, one part of Guwahati will get water because drinking water is the main issue of Guwahati. But now our government under the leadership of Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma has tried to solve and he is still solving. The people of Guwahati will get water very soon. You can see that the communication is so smooth now in Guwahati and artificial flood was one of the problems, which is now resolving at a tremendous rate. So soon, all the problems are getting solved under the leadership of our dynamic leader, Himanta Biswa Sarma.”
Mira Borthakur said, “Drinking water is the major issue. Here, not all houses have access to drinking water. And this issue is not only confined to urban Guwahati but the rural areas as well. And as you might have seen in the news, Guwahati is the second most polluted city. So, I would like to pose this one question to Himanta Biswa Sarma, you built so many bridges in Guwahati but why is there so much of pollution below them. In every area such as Navin Nagar, Gandhi Basti, Tarun Naga, or Bhaskar Nagar, there is no environment for people to live.”
Regarding their winning chances, Medhi said, “I cannot say the exact number. You all know, you all are moving but I can assure you that we will break all the earlier records.”
Borthakur said, “I will definitely win.”
ALSO READ: Meet Abhijnan Hazarika, UPSC Assam Topper, Who Has A Never-Give-Up Attitude
The Guwahati seat has been represented by stalwarts like Rohini Kumar Choudhury, who was also a member of the constituent assembly of India, in 1952, Hema Barua, one of the tallest literary and socialist figures of Assam, in 1957 and 1962 and Dinesh Goswami, former law minister in 1971 and 1985.
As scorching heat remains a concern for the polling day because the temperature is expected to soar, a senior official of Kamrup (Metro) said that to help the voters, drinking water and fans will be made available in all the polling booths in the Lok Sabha constituency.
