Nurul Huda was an Indian politician, former Member of Parliament and former Member of the Legislative Assembly of
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
. A leader of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated as CPI(M)/CPIM/CPM) is a Marxist–Leninist communist political party in India. It is the largest communist party of India in terms of membership and electoral seats and one of the na ...
, Nurul Huda belonged to the
Central Committee of the party.
[''The Telegraph''. ]
CPM to contest in Silchar and Barpeta
'
Background
Nurul Huda hailed from a Manipuri Muslim (referred to as 'Pangal') family. He was born in Dolugram, a village in the remote parts of Cachar district in Assam. He held engineering and law degrees.
Whilst studying engineering at
Jadavpur University
Jadavpur University is a public state university located in Jadavpur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was established in 1905 as ''Bengal Technical Institute'' and was converted into Jadavpur University in 1955. In 2022, it was ranked fourth am ...
he came into contact with the communist movement thereby joining the student politics wing of the CPI (M).
1974 by-election
He contested the 1972 Assam Legislative Assembly election from the Lakhipur seat and finished in second place, with 12,374 votes (38.91%).
Nurul Huda was elected to the
Lok Sabha
The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-p ...
in a by-election in
Cachar in early 1974.
He defeated the
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...
candidate and former Minister Mahitosh Purkayastha by a margin of 19,944 votes.
His victory was declared on 26 February 1974. The by-election had been called following the death of incumbent Congress parliamentarian Jyotsna Chanda.
MLA
In the
1977 Lok Sabha election, Nurul Huda contested the
Silchar seat (the Cachar seat had been abolished in delimitation). He faced the Congress Party candidate
Rashida Haque Choudhury, widow of Moinul Haque Choudhury.
Nurul Huda lost the seat, obtaining 110,085 votes (44.26% of the votes in the constituency).
[Election Commission of India. ]
STATISTICAL REPORT ON GENERAL ELECTIONS, 1977 TO THE SIXTH LOK SABHA - VOLUME I (NATIONAL AND STATE ABSTRACTS & DETAILED RESULTS)
' However, he won the Silchar Legislative Assembly seat in the 1978 elections. He obtained 20,409 votes (44.64%), defeating
Janata Party
The Janata Party ( JP, lit. ''People's Party'') was a political party that was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian Nati ...
candidate
Kabindra Purkayastha.
Later elections
Nurul Huda lost the Silchar Legislative Assembly seat in the 1983 election. He finished in third place with 7,296 votes (13.13%). In 1985 Nurul Huda sought to recapture his seat in the Lok Sabha, standing as a candidate in the Silchar constituency (Lok Sabha polls could not be carried out in Assam during the
1984 general election). He finished in second place with 175,711 votes (39.08%), being defeated by
Santosh Mohan Dev
Santosh Mohan Dev (1 April 1934 – 2 August 2017), was an Indian political leader and a key member of the Indian National Congress. Mr. Dev was first elected to the Parliament of India, Parliament in 1980, the first of his seven terms in offi ...
of the Congress Party. In the
1991 general election Nurul Huda again finished in second place in Silchar, obtaining 193,350 votes (36.81%). He lost to Kabindra Purkayastha (now representing the
BJP
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Mo ...
).
Again, facing Santosh Mohan Dev and Kabindra Purkayastha, Nurul Huda finished third in the Silchar seat in the
1996 Lok Sabha election. He obtained 120,703 votes (21.67%). He again finished third in the
1998 Lok Sabha election in Silchar, obtaining 172,999 votes (27.78%).
CPI(M) fielded the now 74-year-old Nurul Huda in the
2004 Lok Sabha election from Silchar. He finished in fourth place with 20,020 votes.
Shift to Delhi
In 2005 the party relieved Nurul Huda of his responsibilities in Assam, and he shifted to work with the national level office of
All India Kisan Sabha
All India Kisan Sabha ( AIKS; lit. ''All India Farmers Union'', also known as the Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha), is the peasant or farmers' wing of the Communist Party of India, an important peasant movement formed by Sahajanand Saraswati in 1 ...
(peasants movement) in Delhi. As of 2007 he served as joint secretary and finance secretary of the AIKS. The founding conference of the All India Fishers and Fisheries Workers’ Federation (AIFFWF), held in 2007 (co-organised by AIKS and the
Centre of Indian Trade Unions), elected Nurul Huda as its treasurer. The 32nd All India Conference of AIKS, held in 2010, elected Nurul Huda as finance secretary of the organisation.
Death
Nurul Huda died on December 17, 2015 at Ruby Hospital in
Kolkata
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...
, after having suffered a heart attack two days earlier.
[ZeeNews. ]
Nurul Huda, ex-MP of CPI-M, dies in Kolkata
'
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Huda, Nurul
Communist Party of India (Marxist) politicians from Assam
India MPs 1971–1977
Members of the Assam Legislative Assembly