The canvassing against Narendra Modi by Gourav Gogoi, a Congress candidate for the Lok Sabha polls, was to the saffron party's advantage, a BJP nominee reasoned today as the Assam Chief Minister's son was giving publicity to the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate and also the party.
Expressing happiness at receiving unsolicited publicity for BJP and Modi, Mrinal Kumar Saikia, party candidate for the Kaliabor seat, said, "It is good that Gourav Gogoi is repeatedly mentioning Modiji's name at every Congress meeting as Modiji could not campaign for me."
Campaigning in each panchayat area in the constituency, Saikia was personally asking people to vote for Modi while claiming that the Congress had converted Kaliabor into a family domain, but nothing was done for the constituency despite representing it in Parliament for over 20 years.
Gogoi, on the other hand was asking people, particularly in Muslim-dominated villages, to vote against Modi to prevent him from becoming the Prime Minister if they did not want "another Gujarat in Assam".
"Modi wants to convert Assam into another Gujarat. We cannot allow Modi to do so. We are proud of our heritage, tradition and culture."
The prestigious Kaliabor Lok Sabha constituency was a Congress bastion with the Saikia family representing the seat since 1991.
Tarun Gogoi was MP in 1991, 1998 and 1999 from the seat covering ten Assembly segments in Nagaon, Jorhat and Golaghat districts.
Gogoi's brother Dip Gogoi became MP from the seat in a bypoll in 2001 and then won consecutively in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
