Former United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) commander Naba Kumar Sarania alias Hira Sarania, who formed the Jan Suraksha Party (JSP) in 2020, has created raised eyebrows in political circles by opting to contest from the Valmikinagar Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar. Mr. Sarania, 55, is contesting from Valmikinagar against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate and sitting MP Sunil Kumar of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), and the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Deepak Yadav.
The former ULFA commander has been the MP from Assam’s Kokrajhar seat twice, in 2014 and 2019, as an independent candidate, but his nomination papers were rejected from the seat for the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha election. Mr. Sarania challenged the decision of the State Department of Tribal Affairs (Plains), which on January 20 passed the order cancelling the Scheduled Tribe (ST) certificate issued to him in October 2011. Mr. Sarania claims he belongs to the Kachari tribal community.
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Kokrajhar is one of two parliamentary constituencies in Assam reserved for STs; the other is Diphu.
Mr. Sarania later challenged the rejection order in the Gauhati High Court but a single judge Bench of Justice S.K. Medhi on April 28 upheld the order dismissing his ST status.
On May 6, he filed his nomination papers from the Valmikinagar Lok Sabha seat, located about 300 km north-west of State capital Patna, to join the fray with nine other candidates.
“My nomination papers were rejected on some caste certificate issue. Then I came to Valmikinagar to contest the election from here to raise the issue of underdevelopment and poverty of the people here, especially the tribal Tharu people,” Mr. Sarania told The Hindu on Saturday at a small, roadside party office at Harnatand in Valmikinagar, on a day when Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma visited Bihar.
He said that, in 2014, he decided to contest the Lok Sabha election “under local people’s pressure” from Kokrajhar, adding that this led to his expulsion from the ULFA. He won the seat. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he retained his seat with a victory margin of 3.55 lakh votes, he said.
Mr. Sarania, who allegedly received training in militancy in Myanmar and Afghanistan, faces several cases in Assam pertaining to murder, kidnapping, dacoity, criminal conspiracy, unlawful activities, and the possession of illegal weapons, land grabbing, dishonestly receiving stolen property, voluntarily causing grievous hurt, and causing disappearance of evidence.
Sixteen candidates from his party are contesting from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir, he said.
“Ek do bar nahin, balki bar-bar (not once or twice, but again and again),” he said, when asked if he would return to Valmikinagar, should he win from here.
“I have been coming here for the past one year on a pretext or two. I decided to contest the election from here after seeing the pathetic condition of the tribal population and those belonging to the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) here,” he said, when asked why he had chosen to contest from Valmikinagar in Bihar.
“My main poll issue is corruption in government welfare schemes for poor people,” Mr. Sarania said.
The Valmikinagar Lok Sabha constituency comprises about 3.5 lakh tribal voters (mostly belonging to the Tharu tribe), 5.6 lakh EBCs, three lakh Muslims, and 1.5 lakh Scheduled Caste (SC) voter, he said, when asked about his campaign strategy.
However, most voters in Valmikinagar appeared to not have of Mr. Sarania. “Who is he? How does he look? Is he in the fray from this seat?” Prameet Singh alias Vicky, a resident of Rampurva village, about five kilometres from Valmikinagar, asked. Other villagers too sounded surprised to hear of his name.
Mr. Sarania said he had left his home in Assam at the age of 20 in 1989, and had gone underground till 2010-11. “I never did Hindu-Muslim [division] in my life or political career, while 20% of the population in Kokrajhar is from the Muslim community,” he said.
Why did he join the ULFA? “In Assam, there was movement going on for a separate Bodoland, in which thousands of people had been killed in the preceding 30 years but no one had even been accused or jailed. The whole system there had collapsed, so I joined the movement,” Mr. Sarania said, adding, “In Assam, every thoughtful man had joined the ULFA.”
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“But once a person decides to come into mainstream politics by contesting elections, he cannot be a member of the organisation, so I was expelled in 2014,” he said, going on to stress, “You must know the Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma too was in ULFA and I was his commander.”
“I have come to Valmikinagar to not only to contest the election but to win it comfortably,” Mr. Sarania said, before leaving in a fleet of sports utility vehicles to campaign in the scenic doan area, a cluster of Tharu tribe-dominated villages in the idyllic Himalayan foothills.
Valmikinagar shares its border with Nepal. The constituency goes to the polls on May 25.
