Ashish Ranjan
Prodyut Borah party merges with Congress: On Tuesday, an Assam regional party founded by Prodyut Bora the first director of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s information technology (IT) cell and a former member of the party’s national executive committee merged with the Congress.
Prodyut Bora, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party, stated that the decision was made after a majority of his party members concurred that a unified stance against the BJP was necessary prior to the general elections of 2024.
Our party, the LDP, has decided to merge with the Congress. It was a unanimous decision by our party members, who believe that India requires a unified opposition in order to remove the blanket of hostility and untruth that has descended upon the nation. “I respect their collective decision,” said Bora.
Bora, a graduate of St Stephen’s College in Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad, joined the BJP as a member of the national media division in 2004. In 2007, he was appointed national convenor of the IT cell of the BJP.
Bora, who was close to LK Advani and Rajnath Singh, left the saffron party in 2015 to protest the “highly individualised/centralized style of decision making” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the then-national president of the BJP, Amit Shah.In the same year, he founded the LDP in Assam as a regional party not affiliated with the BJP or the Congress.
“Our struggle is against the BJP and the Modi administration. The party leadership believed that the Congress is the finest venue for carrying out this struggle. In the eight years that the LDP has existed, not a single member has joined the BJP. We did what we could, but a larger platform with a broader foundation was required,” he said.
Currently, the LDP has chapters in eleven Assam districts. In the 2016 state elections, the party ran for 14 of the 126 assembly seats but failed to gain any. It decided not to run for assembly elections in 2021.
The LDP was one of nine parties that met in Guwahati earlier this month in response to a call from the Assam Congress to establish a united front against the BJP in the 2024 elections. Jatiya Dal, Raijor Dal, Assam Jatiya Parishad, CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML), Nationalist Congress Party, and Rashtriya Janata Dal were the other parties.
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“We applaud the decision of the LDP to merge with Congress. To combat the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), ideological opponents must band together. Bora was a leader and insider in the saffron party, and his party joining us will make our struggle against the BJP exponentially more effective,” said Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah.
