GUWAHATI
The nomination papers of two-time Assam MP Naba Kumar Sarania, the chief of the Gana Suraksha Party, were rejected on Sunday after his Scheduled Tribe (ST) certificate was found invalid.
A former member of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom, Mr. Sarania has represented western Assam’s Kokrajhar Lok Sabha constituency as an Independent since 2014. It is one of two seats in Assam reserved for the ST community.
He filed his nomination on April 19, a day after the Gauhati High Court found him ineligible to contest from a reserved constituency as his ST certificate was faulty.
Kokrajhar’s Deputy Commissioner and Returning Officer, Pradeep Kumar Dwivedi said the MP’s papers were the only set among 16 invalid nominations.
Voting in Kokrajhar will be held in the third phase on May 7 along with Barpeta, Dhubri, and Guwahati. The scrutiny of the remaining three seats, where 37 nominations were found valid, was done on Saturday.
The scrutiny for the Kokrajhar seat was adjourned till 11 a.m. on Sunday following objections from other candidates, necessitating a hearing for the objectors and Mr. Sarania.
Struck down
According to an order issued by Mr. Dwivedi, the MP “produced an ST certificate claiming to be a member of ‘Rava’ community” although he had contested and won the election from Kokrajhar in 2019 by producing an ST certificate claiming to be a member of the ‘Boro Kachari’ community, which the State-Level Scrutiny Committee struck down and the High Court later upheld.
The certificate that said Mr. Sarania was a member of the Rava community was purportedly issued by the Nalbari district unit of the All Assam Tribal Sangha on November 18, 1986. But “the community field ‘Boro’ has been struck off and ‘Rava’ has been entered without any corresponding countersignature of issuing authority,” the order said.
“A person cannot belong to two different communities and cannot hold two ST certificates of different communities,” the order further said.
