Guwahati, May 4 (PTI) Sons of three former chief ministers were defeated in the Assam Assembly elections, among whom were state Congress president and MP Gaurav Gogoi and Leader of Opposition in the outgoing Assembly Debabrata Saikia.
Gogoi, whose father, late Tarun Gogoi, is the longest-serving chief minister of the state, having helmed Congress governments for 15 years, lost his Jorhat seat to sitting BJP MLA Hitendra Nath Goswami by a margin of 23,182 votes.
The state Congress chief is a third-time MP, representing Jorhat in the Lok Sabha.
Son of two-time CM late Hiteswar Saikia, Debabrata Saikia, failed to retain the family bastion of Nazira.
Once represented by his father and later by his mother Hemoprava Saikia, Saikia had been elected from Nazira successively since 2011, and was the Leader of the Opposition since 2016.
However, he lost the seat this year to Mayur Borgohain of BJP by more than 46,000 votes.
The third ex-CM’s son to taste defeat was Diganta Barman, whose father late Bhumidhar Barman had acted as the chief minister when Hiteswar Saikia had died while in office.
Barman failed to retain the Barkhetri constituency, losing to BJP’s Narayan Deka by over 84,000 votes.
Reacting to the loss by these three Congress candidates, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “There is nothing good to feel in someone’s loss. Especially, when it is Hiteswar Saikia’s son.” Sarma, who was an influential Congress leader for nearly two decades before joining the BJP in 2014, was inducted into the grand old party by Saikia.
The CM maintained their loss was the rejection of “politics of blue-blood” by the people.
“The politics of blue blood has been rejected by the people. They had won three or four previous elections and had time to make their own identities. But they couldn’t do it,” Sarma said.
“Not just the three former chief ministers’ son, family members of other such dynasts have also lost, like Pranjal Ghatowar,” he added, referring to former Union minister Paban Sing Ghatowar’s son being defeated in Chabua-Lahowal by BJP’s Binod Hazarika by over 89,000 votes. PTI SSG SSG RG
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