Assam: BJP Fields Dilip Saikia From Darrang-Udalguri Constituency (Image: Facebook/ Dilip Saikia )

The BJP has announced the candidates for 11 Lok Sabha constituencies in Assam for the upcoming polls. BJP leader Dilip Saikia is the party candidate from the Darrang-Udalguri constituency. It is to be noted that this constituency was previously called Mangaldoi. Following the delimitation process in 2023, the name of the constituency was changed to Darrang-Udalguri.

Dilip Saikia, a seasoned politician, is currently serving as the MP from Mangaldoi constituency. In the 2019 general elections, Mangaldoi witnessed a close battle between Dilip Saikia and Congress candidate Bhubaneswar Kalita. However, the BJP leader secured a total of 7,35,469 votes and defated the Congress candidate with a huge margin of 1,38,545 votes. It is to be noted that the location has been a stronghold of the Congress party for many years.

In January 2021, BJP leader Chandra Mohan Patowary tweeted that Dilip Saikia was nominated in the top 25 MPs of the country in the category “Active MP ‘as per the survey conducted by Fame India-Asia Post.

Dilip Saikia, who has been associated with the party for a long time, has also held several important positions within the BJP. In September 2020, he was inducted as one of the general secretaries of the BJP. He was one of the three leaders from the Northeast who secured a place in the organisational reshuffle at that time. The BJP had also appointed Dilip Saikia as in-charge of Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP secured nine of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam. However, the Congress managed to bag only three parliamentary constituencies in the 2019 polls.