Assam Assembly election 2021, Ripun Bora profile: Congress' state chief hopes to retain Gohpur stronhold

In early March, the Congress announced that Ripun Bora would be contesting from his stronghold of Gohpur, from where he has been elected thrice. It has been a long journey filled with twists and turns for the 65-year-old Assam Pradesh Congress Committee chief. Political career In 2008, Bora, then close to former chief minister Tarun Gogoi and a rising star in Assam, was unceremoniously dropped from the Cabinet and suspended from the Congress after being arrested by the CBI for allegedly offering a bribe to an employee of the Central agency in connection with a murder case against him. The CBI in New Delhi had arrested Bora for allegedly offering a bribe of Rs 10 lakh to a sleuth investigating the  murder case of Daniel Topno, an influential tea community leader who contested the 1996 Assembly elections against Bora from Gohpur constituency. Bora at the time, found himself unable to contest the 2011 Assembly elections and instead made way for his wife Monika (who easily won). Bora, after being cleared in the bribery case by the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court and discharged in the   Topno murder case in 2014 by a district court for lack of concrete evidence, then began plotting his comeback. In 2016, Bora was both elected to the Rajya Sabha after which he was appointed the Assam Congress chief in place of Anjan Datta, who died after a brief illness, by Sonia Gandhi. In 2020, Bora was among the eight Rajya Sabha MPs suspended for a week for ‘unruly behaviour’  in the Upper House during the passage of two contentious farm bills. Personal history A former bureaucrat, Bora hails from North Assam’s Sonitpur district. Bora has an MA (Economics), and an LLB. He attended Gohpur High School, Cotton College, Guwahati and Gauhati University. With inputs from PTI