Politicians in Cachar are using songs to woo voters; Here is a list of them

The battleground for the upcoming Assam Vidhan Sabha elections is all set. Nominations have already been filed all over the state, with the seven LACs under the Cachar district getting a total of 80 nominations across both party and independent candidates. The contest, which was initially supposed to be a two-way battle, has recently turned into a three-way contest in Silchar constituency with the incumbent MLA Dilip Paul filing nomination as an independent candidate at the very last moment, after being snubbed by the BJP in favour of Dipayan Chakraborty.

Now as the polling date is approaching in the valley, campaigning in Silchar has progressed to a whole new level, where a musical battle has taken the forefront as many leading candidates have already released campaign songs to woo voters in favour of them.

The Cachar district, just like the other two districts of the valley, goes to poll on April 1 in the second phase of polling.

The BJP’s candidate for Sonai AC, Aminul Haque Laskar, and his campaign team has already released a campaign song titled ‘Vote Deo Re Aminul Haque Laskar Ke’, which has been doing rounds since its release.

In Dholai, supporters and karyakartas of the BJP candidate and State minister Parimal Suklabaidya are busy promoting their own campaign song titled ‘BJP Ke Chhara Kono Bikolpo Nai’. A video shared by the incumbent MLA of Dholai shows a group of BJP supporters flaunting party flags and singing the song in unison in the middle of a street almost like a musical troupe. This musical battle has given the election campaigning in the Barak Valley a different dimension altogether.

 

But behind all this election campaign hullabaloo, if one carefully examines each of these campaign songs, one can’t help but notice the lack of novelty in each of these compositions. All of these campaign songs happen to be based on original commercial Bengali songs, if not a direct rip-off. The campaign song of Sonai BJP ‘Vote Dao Re Aminul Haque Laskar Ke’ sounds eerily familiar to the cult Bengali folk song ‘Bondhu Darao Re’ by Dohar.

 

 

In Silchar LAC, Congress candidate Tamal Banik’s campaign team has come up with a song called ‘Tamal Banik Re Aanun Jeetaiya’ running almost seven minutes long. It also happens to be ripped off from another popular Bengali folk song and talks about issues like LPG and petrol-diesel price hike, poor roads and city waterlogging. It is composed and sung by Bikramjit Baulia. The campaign song of Dholai BJP ‘BJP Ke Chhara Kono Bikolpo Nai’ seems based on the Bengali song ‘Aage Ki Shundor Din Kataitam’ which ironically also seems oddly fitting.

 

 

Perhaps the most sensational among them all has to be from Dilip Kumar Paul’s camp, with an upbeat campaign song titled ‘Khela Hobe’. The song raises questions on a plethora of allegations made by the incumbent Silchar MLA in a press conference right after quitting BJP and announcing his independent participation. Starting from syndicates of coal, betel nuts, drugs to black money, Gandhi Bagh issue, the song reiterates all the allegations made by Dilip Paul against his former party colleagues. And just like its peers, this one too has been taken from a recently released song for Bengal elections posted on YouTube by a person called Debangshu Bhattacharjee, a spokesperson of Trinamool Congress, which has already been viral since its release back in January.

All in all, this assembly election has opened the door for a new wave of statement war hardly ever seen before, especially in the context of digital space and social media. Only time will tell, which campaign song managed to pierce through the consciousness of the voters.