Saffron alliance sweeps Jorhat, Teok and Dergaon seats as Congress crumbles

From a Correspondent

JORHAT, May 19: Hitendra th Goswami of the BJP (Bharatiya Jata Party) won the prestigious Jorhat seat by defeating arch rival and two times MLA Ra Goswami of the INC (Indian tiol Congress) by 13,638 votes. Hiten Goswami won a total of 69,209 votes against 55,571 garnered by Ra Goswami.

The neck-to-neck fight until the seventh round suddenly took an abrupt turn in favour of BJP from the ninth round when the difference of votes first went up from 2,000 to 5,000 and then to 6,000 in the tenth round and 8,000 in the eleventh round and filly ending near 13,000 with the fil round of counting in the last and fil sixteenth round. With the declaration of the fil result, BJP-AGP alliance sweept Jorhat, Teok and Degaon while the Congress retained only Titabor and Mariani.

A jubiliant Hitendra th Goswami, while talking to The Sentinel, said, “I attribute my win to the people of Jorhat who have voted for a change and to my mother who left me five years back after I lost the last elections. My loss perhaps took her away from me and today I miss her a lot. Many people have been asking as to what would be my first delivery after the win. I would like to say that I plan to bring in the water of River Brahmaputra because of late arsenic has already poisoned both the ground and surface water of Jorhat. Regarding corruption of the past government I will reiterate that law will take its own course and if they are guilty they will be punished.”

Hiten Goswami further said, “I have never indulged in any kind of corruption and to stop corruption, I must not be a corrupt person. I don’t have a revengeful attitude but what belongs to the public, be it be money, development schemes, must be given back to them. I won’t spare anyone on the lines of corruption even if someone is from my family. A government can survive only if we stress more on State interest than self-interest. Misuse of development funds upto the tune of Rs 1.80 lakh crores released by the Centre is the main reason for the Congress’ defeat. People have voted for not only a change but a bigger change that brings changes to the social and economic status of the people.”

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi defeated BJP MP Kamakhya Prasad Tasa in Titabor by a difference of 17,152 votes. Tasa won a total of only 43,429 votes against the Chief Minister’s total of 60,581 votes. Similarly BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate Sarbanda Sonowal emerged victorious with 49,014 votes against Rajib Lochan Pegu of the INC who got 30,565 votes.

In Dergaon, Bhabendra th Bharali of the BJP-AGP alliance defeated Aroti Hazarika Kachari of the INC by 16,272 votes. The BJP-AGP candidate won a total of 63,079 votes against 46,807 votes of the INC candidate.

Similarly, Renupoma Rajkhowa won the Teok seat by garnering 40,928 votes against INC’s Pallabi Saikia Gogoi who got a total of 35,879 votes. While the main fight was between the Congress and the BJP, LDP’s (Liberal Democratic Party) candidate Prodyut Kumar Bora could get only 1,372 votes.