It is a modestly sized public meeting in a corner of a quiet residential neighbourhood in Assam’s Jorhat town on Tuesday evening, but the number of media persons and cameras at the event seems out of key with its scale.
Basking in media glare, the Congress candidate for the Jorhat Assembly constituency, Gaurav Gogoi, tells the gathering, “This election is very important. This election is not just to change the government. Not just to remove one party and bring another one to power. This election is actually to save Assam. That’s why the Jorhat people’s role is noteworthy again. In the last Lok Sabha elections (in 2024), the whole country’s eyes were on Jorhat. Today too, in this Assembly election, everyone’s eyes are on the people of Jorhat. I hope that in the coming days, you will use your wisdom to make a correct decision.”
The previous day, Gogoi, a three-time Lok Sabha MP and the Congress’s Deputy Leader in the Lower House, filed his nomination from the seat, thus making his foray into the Assembly poll arena for the first time.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he had won from the Jorhat parliamentary constituency after a fierce fight with the BJP candidate. But in his state poll debut, Gogoi, 43, is not just contesting from his own seat. For, as the state Congress president, he is also leading the grand old party as well as its six-party alliance against the incumbent BJP in the April 9 state Assembly elections. The Opposition camp is also projecting him as its chief ministerial face.
In Jorhat, Gogoi is leaning on the legacy of former Congress stalwart and CM Tarun Gogoi, his late father. Tarun Gogoi grew up and studied in Jorhat, and had been the Lok Sabha MP from there in the 1970s.
After holding a flurry of meetings in both rural and urban belts of Jorhat, Gaurav Gogoi leaves for Western Assam’s Barpeta district the next day, where he addresses gatherings for the Congress candidates across constituencies besides attending a large rally for ally CPI(M)’s candidate, MLA Manoranjan Talukdar, in the Bhawanipur-Sorbhog seat. On Thursday afternoon, he campaigns for Congress candidate Pallabi Saikia Gogoi in the Teok constituency before returning to Jorhat for the night. According to his team, Gogoi would similarly criss-cross the entire state till the last day of campaigning.
“As the state president, my first and foremost responsibility is to make the Congress win in Assam. I hadn’t asked to contest as a candidate myself in the election but I’m always open to abide by the decision of my party. And I support the decision of the party to make me contest from Jorhat. I also agree that it’s a bold decision,” Gogoi tells The Indian Express.
While it is an election of several firsts for Gogoi, his rival in Jorhat is a formidable local face Hitendra Nath Goswami, the BJP’s sitting MLA, who is seeking his sixth term from the seat. He has contested in every state election from Jorhat since 1991, having been the MLA from 1991 to 2006 as a part of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) before losing the polls in 2006 and 2011.
Goswami switched to the BJP in 2014 and has won twice on the party’s ticket since 2016. In the 2021 Assembly polls, he had won by defeating the Congress’s then candidate Rana Goswami by about 6,500 votes, who later joined the BJP.
A lawyer by training, Hitendra Nath Goswami belongs to a prominent local family. Known for his genteel manners, he enjoys considerable goodwill among the residents of the constituency.
Despite his extensive local networks, Goswami tells The Indian Express that he aims to hold about 150 small interactive meetings during the campaign period, focusing particularly on pockets that have been added to the constituency after the 2023 delimitation exercise.
He points to his image of being corruption-free, highlighting his development work, especially on a project meant for providing arsenic-free drinking water in the constituency.
“He (Gaurav Gogoi) is not my opponent, he is like my brother,” Goswami says. “He has been the MP here for two years now, but we have not seen any special projects here with the MP funds. Of course, he has many other responsibilities and he is a very good orator, but the development work that people expect to see here from an MP has not happened here.”
For many voters, the two candidates, though from the rival parties, have a lot in common. “In terms of experience and personality, both of them are equals. Both are decent men without a record of corruption,” says Madan Gogoi, a 40-year-old resident of the town.
His friend Ashim Kumar Bhattacharya, 51, agrees, but says that he is a little more inclined towards Goswami because of his experience. “In all these years, I haven’t seen anything that is a minus point for Goswami,” he says.
Striking a different note, Madan says Gogoi may have an edge. “Generally, there is a wave for the BJP, but people here, especially the youths, like Gaurav,” he says.
While Gogoi spearheads the Congress’s charge across Assam, his Jorhat canvassing is being undertaken by local party workers, including those who had been aspirants for ticket from the seat. One of these poll aspirants, Krishanu Baruah says, “After campaigning during the day, he (Gogoi) will be based in Jorhat most nights and will go to as many meetings as possible in this way. We will do the rest, holding mandal-wise booth meetings and doing door-to-door outreach. We are positive because there is also an added appeal that the candidate from the Jorhat seat is a CM candidate.”
