Know Your Constituency: Here is the Electoral Landscape of Karimganj

The polling for the Second Phase of the Lok Sabha Election will be held this Friday, April 26. Voters of the three districts of Barak Valley will decide their representatives to Delhi and in turn the government’s fate for the next five years. Karimganj Lok Sabha constituency in Southern Assam comprising the districts of Hailakandi and Karimganj will see a contest between 24 candidates. With over 14 lakh voters, polling will be held at 1660 polling stations. The incumbent Member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party is also in the running as a candidate in the next elections. Over five thousand polling officials are being engaged for the smooth running of the elections in this constituency.

After the delimitation exercise in Assam, the Kaimganj-Hailakandi constituency has been revised as unreserved from earlier SC reserved. Six Assembly Constituencies come under Karimganj-Hailakandi, two in Hailakandi and the other four in Karimganj district. Out of the 24 contesting candidates, three recognised state and national parties contesting for the Karimganj seat are AIUDF’s Sahabul Islam Choudhury, BJP’s Kripanath Malla (incumbent) and Congress’s Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury. 19 candidates are contesting as Independents and two candidates from registered parties.

In Karimganj district, there are 935904 voters, including 475394 males, 460499 females and 11 persons belonging to the third gender. Of the four Assembly Constituencies, Karimganj South has the highest number of voters in the district. Karimganj North comes next, which now includes Badarpur, a separate constituency earlier. Ratabari Legislative Assembly (LA) constituency has now been renamed Ramkrishnanagar, is closely third in terms of voter population and the last being Patharkandi LA Constituency.

Constituency Karimganj also includes Hailakandi district, where 476335 voters are enrolled. It includes 247808 males, 228526 females and 1 person belonging to the third gender. LA Algapur-Katlicherra (earlier Algapur) has 262254 voters and Hailakandi has 214081 total voters. On Friday, polling in the Hailakandi district will be held in 602 stations.

In the 2019 elections, Kripananth Mallah won after a very close contest with AIUDF’s Radheshyam Biswas with a difference of just 38,389 votes. This year, Radheshyam Biswas switched sides and is contesting for the Silchar seat from Trinamool Congress’s ticket. AIUDF’s current candidate, Sahabul Islam Choudhury is facing backlash from voters of the Karimganj Constituency. Many even call AIUDF, BJP’s B-team. It remains to be seen whether this will be an anti-incumbency election with 71-year-old Hafiz Rashid contesting on the Congress ticket.