Surya Kanta Sarkar: Congress Candidate From Silchar Constituency (image-facebook/ Surya Kanta Sarkar)

Congress has fielded Surya Kanta Sarkar as its candidate from the Silchar constituency. Surya Kanta, a long-time worker of the Silchar Congress was finally handpicked by the party high command for the big fight against the heavyweight BJP candidate Minister Parimal Suklabaidya. 

Surya Kanta Sarkar belongs to the ‘Kaibartya’ clan and was a close aide of TMC MP Sushmita Dev. Sarkar had earlier moved from Congress and later returned back to Congress. 

The Silchar Lok Sabha has been reserved for the Scheduled Caste following delimitation. The constituency will go to the polls on April 26. This is the first time since independence the constituency is going for polls as a seat reserved for the scheduled caste. The SC community constitutes 14.06% of the total electorate.

The Silchar constituency consists of seven assembly segments- Silchar, Sonai, Dholai, Lakhipur, Udharband, Borkhola and Katigorah. 

Four of the seven assembly seats are currently represented by the BJP while two seats- Borkhola and Katigorah- are represented by the Congress and the Sonai seat belongs to the AIUDF. 

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, BJP candidate Dilip Kumar Paul won the polls by securing 94,787 votes defeating Congress candidate Bithika Dev. 

According to political observers, in the absence of an AIDUF candidate, which promotes minority interests in particular, the minority voters will be in dilemma. 

The constituency will witness a triangular contest among BJP’s Parimal Suklabadya, an Assam minister and five-time MLA from the Dholai constituency, Trinamool Congress’s Radhesyam Biswas, a former AIDUF MP from Karimganj and Surya Kanta Sarkar of the Congress.