GUWAHATI: Shiladitya Dev, who in the past five years placed himself as a champion of Bengali-speaking Hindu in the Brahmaputra valley, is BJP’s new golden boy in Assam. After being a denied ticket, leading to his resignation from the party, Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, along with a national general secretary, heaped praises on Dev at his Hojai constituency home, saying that he will get his due position after the government is formed.
Dev, 52, has an RSS background, and won his first election in 2016 from the Hojai constituency, which is also AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal’s native place. Surprisingly, he was dropped from BJP’s list of candidates, triggering protests within RSS and resigned from the party.
Dev is among 13 sitting BJP MLAs to have not got a ticket, but he stood out as an as no less than Himanta and party national general secretary Dilip Saikia drove to his house in Hojai to pacify him, asking him not to walk out of the party.
After the meeting, Sarma addressed the media and said, “Dev was in BJP, is still in BJP and will continue to remain in the party as an important member.”
He heaped praises on Dev saying that he is among the top five BJP MLAs who performed in the last five years. “Dev is a party old-timer who has worked very hard for many years and has been actively involved in taking the BJP to the position where it has reached now in the state. His report card is excellent,”
Sarma said. Sarma said, “It will be wrong to say he (Dev) has been denied a ticket. I would say that the party has given the ticket to Ramakrishna Ghosh in Hojai. After the elections are over and our government assumes office again, Dev will be given his due position.”
Sarma said Dev had been vocal about the problems of the Bengali-speaking people, and “the party has no difference of opinion and we will together take care to ensure that the party’s ideal of nationalism is followed.”
Soon after BJP’s Hojai candidate was announced on Wednesday, Dev posted on his Facebook page, “Finally, I have been kicked out of BJP”. Later, he told the media that he was a victim of conspiracy and has been “politically murdered” because he was “pro-Hindutva”.
Another senior BJP leader and former deputy speaker of the assembly, Dilip Paul, had also announced that he would quit the party after he was denied a ticket from Silchar, but Sarma said he too will remain in BJP