Sonia’s Tezpur visit may be called off

GUWAHATI, February 3: The proposed Tezpur visit of star Congress campaigner Sonia Gandhi is likely to be called off, with the controversy su...

GUWAHATI, February 3: The proposed Tezpur visit of star Congress campaigner Sonia Gandhi is likely to be called off, with the controversy surrounding the party candidate for the prestigious constituency getting snider media attention day by day.

The Congress candidate for this seat in northern Assam has landed in a controversy, first because of his alleged involvement in several financial scandals, and then because of his allegedly doubtful citizenship status.

Sonia, who had earlier addressed an election rally in Guwahati last month, is scheduled to tour Tezpur, Nagaon and Lakhimpur later this week to boost up party morale in these three constituencies. Mani Kumar Subba, the Congress candidate, is alleged to have said that he was a childhood friend of Rajiv Gandhi, while the local media is full of stories that he was a jail-breaker in Nepal and an ex-convict.

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Party insiders confirmed that Sonia’s proposed trip to Tezpur was cleared by telling her that the party candidate there would be SwaroopUpadhyaya, a former MP, whose name is said to have been struck off and replaced by that of Subba at the eleventh hour.

Subba, an MLA from the Naoboicha assembly constituency under Lakhimpur Lok Sabha constituency, is pitted against Kartik Hazarika of the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) and Iswar Prasanna Hazarika of the Bharatiya Janata Party, among others.

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