Mahanta out to ‘finish’ Bora in battle royale

Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Guwahati, April 30: DISPUR in Assam is set to witness one of the most fiercely-contested fights in these elections as Chief Minister P.K. Mahanta gets ready to settle scores with friend-turned-foe Atul Bora of the Trinamul Gana Parishad and take on traditional rivals Congress.

It’s not hard to conclude that the AGP president would like to eliminate Bora from politics, if possible once and for all. Bora was the party general secretary through the thick and the thin until the former PWD minister revolted after Mahanta reshuffled his ministry in May 1998.

Adding colour to the contest is the Congress though its campaign has been low-key till now. Its candidate, Captain Robin Bordoloi, is the son of Gopinath Bordoloi, Assam’s first chief minister. ‘‘Dispur used to be known as the Sonapur constituency at the time of Independence, and it was my father who represented it,’’ says Captain Bordoloi, who is also playing up his father’s name to attract voters.

Mahanta’s home seat is Barhampur in Nagaon. But as always, he has been contesting from two seats. Mahanta’s reasons to choose Dipsur are clear: the Chief Minister and his government are most visible here — several of his dream projects have been started here.

It includes the Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra, considered to be the largest cultural complex in the country. AGP leaders say if the Chief Minister is in Guwahati and not available in his office or residence, he is most likely to be found at Kalakshetra.

Dispur has been with the AGP since 1985 and represented by Atul Bora every time. The party secured 62 per cent votes in 1985, which slid to 33.5 per cent in 1991 (there were 25 candidates in the fray). In 1996, the AGP won back the confidence of voters to get 64.91 per cent votes.

Mahanta, however, remains unfazed with Bora’s winning streak from the seat. ‘‘Those are not Bora’s private votes. They belong to the AGP. The voters of Dispur had not asked him (Bora) to quit the AGP,’’ says the Chief Minister.

Bora’s grouse while quitting the party was that a senior member like him should have been consulted before the reshuffle. So when Mahanta asked him to give up the PWD porfolio and take over the Forest ministry, Bora not only quit to launch a new party but took with him ex-Speaker Pulakesh Barua. Bora is the second seniormost leader after former Home minister Bhrigu Kumar Phukan to have quit the AGP and opposed Mahanta. This time, Bora tried to tie up with Phukan. But, sources say, that Phukan refused to entertain him as Bora is said to have caused rift between Mahanta and him.

Mahanta has the advantage of having the BJP as an ally. Even though the party fared poorly well in Dispur (3.03 per cent in 1991 and 9.16 in 1996), it secured 64.36 per cent of the votes in the segment when Bijoya Chakravarty won the Guwahati Lok Sabha seat in 1999. And Mahanta has leaders such as L.K. Advani and A.B. Vajpayee to campaign for him. Dismissing the threat from Bora, Mahanta says: ‘‘It is a fight between the AGP-BJP combine and the Congress.’’ Bora feels that Mahanta would be outright rejected by the voters of Dispur: ‘‘I have been here for the past 15 years.Government employees who constitute a major chunk of the electorate simply do not want to hear Mahanta’s name.”

Akon Bora, general secretary of the APCC who has been denied a ticket this time, has not only opposed captain Bordoloi’s candidature but even initially resisted his entry into the party’s district office.