was an Assamese freedom fighter, social activist, litterateur and politician, who served as the Leader of Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly.
[2] Bhattacharya was born in Samarkuchi village of Nalbari district to Souridutta Bhattacharyya, a Sanskrit Pandit.
[3] In 1952, Bhattacharya won election to the Assam Legislative Assembly from the Guwahati constituency for the Communist Party of India (CPI) defeating Rajabala Das of the Indian National Congress (INC).
[c] Months afterward, during the Sino-Indian War, Bhattacharya was subject to preventive detention by the Congress government for his activism; he would leave CPI, shortly.
[4] In the 1967 elections, Bhattacharya stood as an independent candidate from the newly delimited Borbhag constituency and eked out a comfortable win over Pabindra Nath Sarma of the INC.[d] Two years later, Bhattacharya collaborated with Renuka Devi Barkataki, a Congress renegade, to launch the Peoples Democratic Party of Assam (PDPA);[e] it would be the first regional party to contest the assembly elections.