The Bharatiya Janata Party has changed its Assembly election candidate for the Alipurduar constituency. Suman Kanjilal, the general secretary of the Alipurduar district committee of the BJP, has now replaced noted economist Ashok Kumar Lahiri as the party’s candidate.
Also, the party announced the name of Dipak Barman as the candidate for the Falakata Assembly. The party had not declared the candidate for the seat earlier. “Only our central leaders can say the reason of this change.
Suman Kanjilal is our candidate for the Alipurduar assembly now. At the same time, Dipak Barman has been selected as our candidate for the Falakata Assembly seat, while Manoj Tigga and Bishal Lama are our candidates for the Madarihat and Kalchini constituencies and Manoj Oraon our candidate in Kumargrame,” said the district president of the BJP, Ganga Prasad Sharma.
It may be mentioned here that Mr Sharma had publicly expressed reservations on the selection of Mr Lahiri as the election candidate, while he had later softened his stance and promised to work for him for the polls.
Observers in the district say that the top BJP leadership may have buckled under pressure from a section of leaders and workers, who had been protesting Mr Lahiri’s nomination and demanding a local candidate.
Also, sources today said that the nomination of Mr Lahiri was fraught with certain problems, as he held a voter ID card from a different state and that there was little or no time in hand to have the same transferred to Alipurduar. Mr Lahiri did not respond to calls made on his phone today.
On the other hand, the new candidate, Mr Kanjilal, said: “I am thankful to my party, which declared me as the candidate for the Alipurduar Assembly constituency. We will win all the five assembly seats in Alipurduar district.”
While the filing of nominations for the elections in the district began on 16 March, the last for the submission of the same is 23 March. Alipurduar district will vote in the fourth phase of the Assembly elections on 10 April.