BPF's Rangja Basumatary to join BJP & 'retire' from election: Himanta Biswa Sarma

TAMULPUR: The mystery surrounding senior Bodoland People's Front (BPF) leader Ram Das Basumatary came to an end last night after Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that he had "expressed a desire to join BJP."

"Official candidate of BPF and so-called congress led alliance from Tamulpur LAC, Sri Ram Das Basumatary met me a short while ago. He has expressed his desire to Join BJP and retire from the election," Biswa Sarma tweeted at 11:35 pm, putting an end to the mystery over the leader's disappearance.

Basumatary remained untraceable yesterday morning, leading party workers to speculate that he could have been 'hijacked' by some other political party.

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BPF leader and former executive member Ganesh Kachary said the party had gotten the information that Basumatary has left for Guwahati to “work out a financial deal” to join the BJP or UPPL.

Despite the setback, the BPF party remains undeterred and will go ahead with the election.

"Not a single non-Bodo will vote for the BJP-UPPL in the constituency. So we’ve doubled our effort from today to ensure that the BPF symbol, plough, wins so that his victory will be annulled under anti-defection law and by-election will be held here. We’ll deprive him of being the MLA for his own greed,” Kachary told media persons.

Tamulpur Assembly constituency in the Baksa district of Assam goes to the polls on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Tamulpur seat is part of the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha constituency, which falls in the Lower Assam region of Assam.

Meanwhile, voting for the second phase of the assembly election in Assam began at 7 am on Thursday morning. A total of 39 assembly seats across 14 districts in Assam are going to the polls today. The Election Commission has set up 10,592 polling stations for Phase-2 in Assam.

Over 73.44 lakh voters will decide the fate of 345 candidates, including 26 female candidates, in the second phase of the Assam assembly election. Out of the total number of registered voters in Phase-2, 37,34,537 are male, 36,09,959 are female and 135 identify as transgender.