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Guwahati, Oct. 9 (IANS): Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday predicted that the ruling BJP and its ally will win all the five Assembly seats for which by-elections will be held on October 30.
Of the five Assembly seats, in the March-April elections to the 126-member Assam Assembly, the opposition Congress won two, its then allies United Democratic Front (AIUDF) and Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) won one each, while BJP ally United People's Party Liberal (UPPL) secured one.
Sarma said the BJP and its ally UPPL wiil win all the five seats comfortably.
The Chief Minister on Friday accompanied Congress-tuned-BJP leader Sushanta Borgohain when he filed his nomination on the last day of filing of candidature for the Thowra Assembly seat.
Sarma said that Borgohain, who was elected to the Assembly after defeating BJP candidate Kushal Duwari, would win from Thowra in Sivasagar district for the third time as a BJP candidate.
Borgohain, a two-time Congress legislator from Thowra, recently resigned from the party and joined the BJP.
Four-time Congress MLA from Mariani, Rupjyoti Kurmi, who also recently quit the party and joined the BJP, filed his nomination paper for the Mariani seat as a saffron party candidate on Friday.
Kurmi was also accompanied by the Assam Chief Minister, Union Minister Rameswar Teli and two state ministers, Atul Bora and Pijush Hazarika.
The Assembly seats going to the bypolls on October 30 are Gossaigaon, Tamulpur, Thowra, Bhabanipur and Mariani.
The other candidates who filed their nominations include UPPL's Jiron Basumatary (Gossaigaon), Congress' Bhaskar Dahal (Tamulpur), and CPI-M's Krishna Gogoi (Thowra).
The counting of votes will take place on November 2.
Bypolls to Gossaigaon and Tamulpur were necessitated due to the deaths of the sitting MLAs -- Majendra Narzary of BPF and Ram Boro of UPPL -- who had succumbed to Covid-19, while the legislators of Bhabanipur (Phanidhar Talukdar of AIUDF), Mariani (Rupjyoti Kurmi of Congress) and Thowra (Sushanta Borgohain of Congress) had resigned from their seats to join the BJP.