Assam TMC says seat-sharing chances with INDIA partners ‘slim’

In December last year, there had been reports that the TMC had been eyeing four – Dhubri, Lakhimpur, Kokrajhar and Karimganj – out of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam.

The first meeting of the Congress’s Central Election Committee to decide on candidates for the polls will be held Thursday.

TMC’s Ripun Bora, who left the Congress for the TMC in 2022, said the party would still wait to see if a seat-sharing arrangement could be arrived at but said “the possibility is very low”.

“If there is no seat sharing in West Bengal, then there will be no seat sharing here in Assam as well. We are hearing that the Assam Congress will release its list of candidates on March 8, but we have not had a final meeting to finalise a seat sharing arrangement. Since the chances seem to be low, we are preparing to contest with our own candidates. It’s very late in the day and there is no more time to wait,” Bora told The Indian Express.

In the last week of February, TMC leader Derek O’Brien had said that his party will be going solo in the upcoming polls. He said there was “no change” in the party’s stand of contesting all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, a few in Assam, and one in Meghalaya.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), another member of the INDIA alliance and the United Opposition Forum in Assam, has already announced three candidates in Assam. Saying it was “tired of talking” about seat-sharing with alliance partners, the AAP’s central leadership announced its candidates early February but insisted that the party is “strongly” with the Opposition INDIA bloc.

As the Opposition unity seems to be unravelling ahead of the elections, one constituency where an alliance partner is likely to contest in Assam is the Dibrugarh constituency, where there is a strong possibilty of Lurinjyoti Gogoi, the president of regional party Asom Jatiya Parishad and former All Assam Students’ Union president, being fielded as the alliance candidate.