Union minister Rajen Gohain fails to get LS ticket despite rape clean chit

Guwahati: Even after the clean chit of the court to union minister of state for railway Rajen Gohain in the rape case, the BJP on Tuesday named Rupak Sharma for the Nowgong Lok Sabha seat in Assam.

The party chose to deny ticket to Mr Gohain who was representing the constituency since 1999. Mr Sharma is the sitting MLA from Nowgong assembly seat. As delay in announcing the names of candidate has triggered a lot of speculations, the secretary of the Central Election Committee of the BJP Jagat Prakash Nada said that Mr Sharma’s name was decided at a meeting attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and road transport minister Nitin Gadkari.

The Gauhati high court on Monday had quashed criminal proceedings against the Union minister of state for railways Rajen Gohain in a rape case. Mr Gohain, the four-time BJP MP from Nowgong, had earlier said that he would not contest the forthcoming polls until his name was cleared by the high court.

It was believed that central election committee had kept the candidate name of Nowgong LS seat on hold anticipating a favourable judgment from the court. However, it was proven wrong as central election committee on Tuesday morning released then list of candidate, which named Mr Rupak Sharma as candidate.

Nowgong will go to the polls on April 18.

The three-phase election for 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam will be held on April 11, 18 and 23. It is significant that BJP has denied ticket to five out of seven sitting MPs of the party in Assam. (EOM)