Assam Cong breathes easy as rebels pull out of fray

GUWAHATI, April 26: The snowballing dissidence in the Assam PCC today blew over when several rebel Congressmen withdrew their nominations in favour of the party's official candidates. PCC chief Tarun Gogoi had appealed to all rebel candidates to pull out of the contest yesterday. The battlelines have been drawn for the May 10 Assembly election with a total of 914 candidates left in the fray for the 126 seats. Fifty-three contestants withdrew their candidature today, the last date of withdrawal of nominations. Dissident Congress candidates who withdrew their nominations include Prasanna Malla Buzarbaruah whose followers went berserk at Rajiv Bhawan on Tuesday after he was denied the party ticket. Buzarbaruah was arrested but released later. The PCC leadership also managed to convince Rashidul Haque, Phani Sharma and Kiron Gogoi among other rebel candidates to withdraw from the fray in favour of the official nominee. However, the PCC president's promise to accommodate those who were denied candidature in "development projects" if the Congress came to power, failed to woo senior dissident leader Mukut Sharma in Nagaon. Sharma claimed that thousands of Congress workers had resigned from the party and started campaigning for him to defeat the official nominee. He told newspersons at Nagaon today that about 400 minority people have offered to donate a day's wage towards his election fund. The Opposition party is ready with its poll manifesto which will be released by the PCC president tomorrow. The ruling AGP and its ally, the BJP are also scheduled to jointly announce their poll strategy tomorrow. Chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta is contesting from both Barhampur and Dispur. While six candidates are in the fray in Barhampur, there are 12 contesting from Dispur. In Tezpur constituency, eight candidates are in the fray. Tezpur is likely to witness a keen contest between Brindaban Goswami (AGP), Rabin Goswami (Congress) and "dissident BJP leader" Bijit Saikia. The central executive committee of the All-Assam Students' Union today decided that the organisation would remain neutral and not back any party in the polls. AASU general secretary Amiyo Kumar Bhuyan said the student body was of the view that the people of Assam would accept only those parties or candidates with a clear stand on issues like the Migrants' Act, reservation of seats in Parliament for indigenous people and preparation of correct voters list. The total number of candidates this time is less than that of the 1996 polls. There were 1,228 candidates in the fray in the last Assembly elections.