Assam Chief MinisterSarbananda Sonowal on Sunday said that he was confident of Bharatiya JanataParty-led government retaining the power in the state for the secondconsecutive term.
Sarbananda Sonowal isthe current Assam Chief Minister and will remain the same for the next fiveyears. Sonowal is the 14th Chief Minister of Assam. He is a member of theBhartiya Janta Party and represents the Majuli constituency in the Assam StateLegislative Assembly. He is the first BJP leader but the second Tribal to besworn in as the Chief Minister of Assam.
In the Assam election2021, BJP has comfortably led over the Congress-led alliance. BJP-led alliancehas won 77 seats out of 119 seats. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that"People bless us, BJP to retain power in Assam."
Sonowal has served asthe Union Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs, Government of India, duringthe 2014 general election for Lok Sabha he was elected as the 16th member ofLok Sabha from the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha Constituency in Assam as the member ofBJP from Assam. He was also a National Executive Member of the party. He wasalso appointed as Union Minister of State-Independent Charge, of the Governmentof India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He served as thepresident of BJP from Assam and was elected as the Chief Minister in 2016. InMay 2016, he was elected to represent BJP from Majuli at the Assam LegislativeAssembly and he was sworn as the 14th Chief Minister of Assam.
He is known as'firebrand' and 'dynamic youth politician', also regarded as 'Jatiya Nayak ofAssam', this title is given by AASU, the oldest student union of the state.
From 1992 to 1999,Sarbananda was the president of the All Assam Studnet Union (AASU). Until,January 2011, he was a member of Ason Gana Parishad (abbreviated as AGP), in2004, he was elected as the Lok Sabha member representing the Dibrugarhconstituency and continued to be so till 2009 and later he moved on to BhartiyaJanta Party (BJP).
Sarbananda Sonowalresigned from all the posts within AGP and left the party, because of thedissatisfaction with and among the senior leaders of the party who were tryingto ally with a party that was against the scraping of the IMDT Act.
In 2011 Sonowal joinedthe Bhartiya Janta Party in the presence of then BJP National President NitinGadkari and other senior leaders. And in January 2011 BJP Parliamentary Boardannounced that Sonowal will be the BJP Chief Ministerial candidate of Assam.
He is a Chief Ministerwho has always concentrated on the art and culture of the state, has alwaysactively participated in the events to promote the same. The annual GuwahatiInternational Film Festival was started during his tenure. It was organized bythe State-Government-owned Film Studio - Jyoti Chitraban Society in associationwith the Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Regional Government Film and Television Institute.The film festival is organized every year from 2018, the first edition was heldin Oct. 2018 and due to the present Covid-19 pandemic, it has been postponed.
He played a significantrole in removing the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act (IMDTAct). When the Assam face a problem of massive immigration then the governmentbrought the IMDT Act was signed between the Central Government and the AllAssam Students Union to end the decade-long anti-foreigner agitation.
This Act detects theBangladeshi illegal immigrants and expels them from Assam. It is onlyapplicable for the Bangladeshi nationals who have settled on or after 25thMarch 1971. Under this Act, the onus of providing the citizenship of asuspected illegal foreigner rests on the complainant, often the police. And itis not the same with the Foreigners Act, applicable in the rest of the countryexcept Assam. Sonowal took this issue of Bangladeshi infiltration to theSupreme Court of India. As per the judgment dated July 12, 2005, the courtabolished the Act and termed Bangladeshi infiltration an 'external aggression'.
Sarbananda Sonowal wasborn on 31 October 1962 in Muluk Gaon in the Dibrugarh district of Assam. Hecompleted his Bachelor's degree in English (Hons) from Dibrugarh University andhis LLB from Gauhati University. We won the title 'Mr. Diburgarh Strongman',during his college days.