DIBRUGARH : It will be a battle between two former titans of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) – Sarbananda Sonowal and his much junior, Lurinjyoti Gogoi – when the Dibrugarh seat goes to elections on April 19.
Sonowal (61), the BJP candidate and Union minister, earned the sobriquet “Jatiya Nayak” (National Hero) after the Supreme Court struck down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act in 2005, based on a petition that he filed. He was then serving as an MP of the Asom Gana Parishad, the launchpad of his political career. The Act was viewed by many as heavily tilted in favor of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Gogoi (44), the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) biggie, is fighting another battle – the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). In fact, his AJP was born out of this movement in 2020.
The third and last candidate in Dibrugarh is the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Manoj Dhanowar. The constituency clearly braces for a straight contest between Sonowal and Gogoi.
It is a homecoming for Sonowal. Not only does he hail from Dibrugarh, but he also won his maiden Assembly election from Moran in Dibrugarh district in 2001 and the parliamentary election from the Dibrugarh seat in 2004.
However, he lost the 2009 Lok Sabha elections from the Dibrugarh seat, giving him a sweet-bitter experience here. In 2014, he won from the adjoining Lakhimpur Lok Sabha seat and donned the chief minister’s mantle after winning the 2016 Assembly elections from the Majuli seat.
As for Gogoi, he is an emerging leader. He contested the 2021 Assembly elections from Duliajan and Naharkatia seats in the backdrop of the anti-CAA protests but lost in both.
The Dibrugarh seat, comprising 10 Assembly segments spread across the two upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh and Tinsukia, was a Congress stronghold until the BJP’s emergence as a formidable force in 2014.