Congress, Raijor Dal finalise alliance; state party gets 11 seats

GUWAHATI: (Mar 20) After days of negotiation and uncertainty, the Congress and Raijor Dal finalised seat-sharing arrangements for the Assam assembly polls, and decided that the national party will leave 11 constituencies for the other one, and there will be a friendly contest in two. In a late-night development on Thursday at Jorhat, leaders of the two parties, headed by state Congress president Gaurav Gogoi and Raijor Dal chief Akhil Gogoi, signed the agreement.

Akhil Gogoi will contest from Sivasagar, a seat he won in the last polls while still in prison on sedition charges for allegedly instigating violence during the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests.

The Congress had given the Margherita seat to the Raijor Dal. Earlier, the national party had given it to Prateek Bordoloi, who decided not to contest on a Congress ticket after his father defected to the BJP earlier this week.