Bhubaneswar and Dilip
File image of Congress' Bhubaneswar Kalita (left) and BJP's Dilip Saikia filing nomination papers at Mangaldai. Image: Northeast Now

On the penultimate day of filing of nominations for 8 Mangaldai parliamentary constituency on Monday, a total of four candidates including Congress’ Bhubaneswar Kalita and BJP’s Dilip Saikia filed their nomination.

The candidates filed their nominations before Ghanashyam Dass, the returning officer of the Mangaldai Lok Sabha constituency, who is also the deputy commissioner of Darrang.

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Assam BJP president Ranjeet Kumar Dass, State ministers Bhabesh Kalita and Rihan Daimary along with other MLAs of the BJP and its allies AGP and BPF of the Assembly segments under the HPC accompanied BJP candidate Dilip Saikia during his filing of nomination.

Dalgaon MLA Ilias Ali, former ministers Basanta Das and Zoiinath Sarma were among the senior leaders who accompanied Congress candidate and Eajya Sabha MP Bhubaneswar Kalita at the time of filing of his nomination.

Earlier, both the BJP and Congress candidates carried out huge rallies of their respective party members and supporters before arriving at the deputy commissioner’s office.

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The other two candidates, who also filed their nominations are Pradip Kr Daimary of the United Peoples’ Party Liberal (UPPL) and Biren Basak of the Bharatiya Gana Parishad (BGP).

Meanwhile, the normal life in the district headquarter town, Mangaldai, has been badly affected during the course of the nomination process due to serious traffic snarls created by the rallies of both the heavyweight candidates carried out to showcase their political strengths.

It may be mentioned that Tuesday is the final scheduled day for filing of nomination paper in the Mangaldai parliamentary constituency where polling will be conducted in the second phase.