Political parties of Cachar district in Assam have slowly started to wake up and devise battle strategy for the forthcoming panchayat elections slated to be held on December 9, next month.
With the nomination process beginning on Friday, the major political parties of this district too have started collecting names of the candidates who are willing to contest these elections. Candidates of Cachar district would lock horns on 9th December, the second phase of polls.
The district headquarters of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) are witnessing a sudden spurt of probable candidates knocking at their doors. According to political analysts, hundreds of candidates would jump into the fray to try their luck and win a seat.
The district party headquarters of Cachar depicted a similar picture for the past two days. Speaking to Northeast Now, Pradip Dey, District Congress President of Cachar, said, “We are hopeful of winning thumpingly. The time is very short, but it is a challenge for us, as this election would no doubt have a notable bearing on the Lok Sabha elections.”
The BJP on the other hand is advancing step by step and is likely to post the final list of candidates by 15th of November, next, for which, probable candidates have been asked to submit their names by 11th of November. Kanad Purkayastha, General Secretary of Cachar BJP, and son of former Union minister, Kabindra Purkayastha, is confident of winning panchayat elections too, after taking charge, both at the Centre as well as the State.
Talking to Northeast Now, Kanad said, “We are promising a Congress mukt Bharat and we would definitely achieve that in the days to come.”
However, both Congress’s Pradip Dey and BJP’s Kanad Purkayastha ascertained that the new amendment for selecting candidates would be a problem, but, acknowledged to accept it in the better interest of taking development projects right up to the grass roots level.
Pradip Dey, though, didn’t stop to point out that this amendment should not have been placed for the panchayat polls in Assam, as he believes that 50 percent household are yet to have a sanitary toilet, no matter, how much the BJP claims of making Cachar district, an Open Defecation Free (ODF) declared on 2nd of October, this year.
On eyeing 2019 Lok Sabha elections with the one that of panchayat polls now, Kanad Purkayastha believes, “These two elections are different and won’t have much effect, while, Pradip Dey, is taking this panchayat poll as a semi-final to the much bigger battle in 2019, the Lok Sabha elections.