It is no surprise for those who have been closely following Assam politics surrounding the general elections that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies have secured 11 out of the 14 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP swept nine seats, while the UPPL and AGP got one seat each. Assam's powerful Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has called it a ‘historic victory’, highlighting that since 1985 no alliance has managed to win more than 10 seats.
However, the two Assam results that have piqued interest and have emerged as political talking points are Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi's victory in Jorhat and the colossal defeat of Badruddin Ajmal in Dhubri.
Why Gogoi's Victory is So Important
In the contest in Jorhat, Sarma took on Gogoi, the son of his former political mentor and ex-CM Tarun Gogoi, with a personal and relentless approach — it was considered a battle of ‘prestige’, as The Hindu noted quite aptly. Sarma and other influential leaders of the BJP campaigned fiercely in Jorhat. On the other hand, Gogoi found himself somewhat of an outsider in the constituency.
He was compelled to contest from Jorhat after the delimitation process last year altered the demographic profile of Kaliabor, the seat he had previously won twice and which had been a Gogoi family stronghold for over three decades.
Muslim-majority segments of Kaliabor were moved to neighbouring Nagaon constituency, while non-Muslim areas of Nagaon were added to Kaliabor, which was subsequently renamed Kaziranga. Congress has won Nagaon, while Kaziranga has gone to the BJP.
The rivalry between Sarma and Gogoi over the Jorhat seat has been so pronounced that when Tuesday’s early trends showed the latter in the lead, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted that “the countdown” for Sarma's “exit... has also begun!” Sarma, when asked by reporters about this, responded that such targeting by Congress’s national leadership only showed how his and Assam’s profile has grown in the national political landscape through this election.
At a time when the Congress appeared to be disintegrating in Assam, marked by significant defections to the BJP ahead of the elections and Sarma's increasing dominance over state politics, Gogoi faced the daunting task of revitalising the party's local organisational forces and boosting morale in the constituency before challenging the BJP's sitting MP, Topon Gogoi. He did that successfully, and that too with comparatively limited resources, a party insider told me.
However, many view Gogoi's victory as a recognition of his performance and capabilities as a parliamentarian, rather than a mandate for the Congress party. As the deputy leader of the Congress in the outgoing Lok Sabha, Gogoi is currently the grand old party’s most prominent face nationally from the Northeast, often outspoken in his criticism of the Modi government and in highlighting issues of the region on the floor of the Parliament.
Throughout this election season, Sarma often repeated that the end of the Congress in Assam is nigh. Most Congress leaders, he claimed, would be joining the saffron party soon. Gogoi's victory, along with the Congress's strong performance in neighbouring Manipur, Meghalaya, and Nagaland, suggests that a major rout may not be imminent.
However, the existence of a regional party in Assam is indeed in question following the results — Ajmal’s AIUDF, which represents primarily the interests of the state’s Bengali-origin Muslims.
Is it the Beginning of the end for AIUDF?
On Tuesday, the AIUDF lost the three Muslim-majority seats it contested. The party’s founder and three-consecutive-term MP Ajmal was defeated by Congress heavyweight Rakibul Hussain by a record margin of over 10 lakh votes in Dhubri. The huge margin, observers say, probably has to do with delimitation. The Muslim-dominated areas of the neighbouring Barpeta constituency (previously a Muslim-dominated constituency) were added to Dhubri, consolidating a vast majority of Muslim voters into one constituency.
With a total of 26.43 lakh voters (85% Bengali-origin Muslims), the delimitation exercise has turned Dhubri into Assam’s most populous parliament constituency.
The AIUDF was established in 2005 by Ajmal, a perfume magnate with a family business spread over 50 countries. Although some party leaders are keen to shed the image of a “Muslim-only party”, the label persists due to the prominent roles held by Islamic preachers within the party.
The party’s primary focus has for long been the contentious issues surrounding the identity and citizenship of Bengali-origin Muslims, a community that forms the largest section (nearly three-fourths) of the state’s 35% Muslim population (2011 Census). In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party’s seats came down to one from three. In the current Assam assembly, the AIUDF holds 16 seats after contesting as part of a Congress-led opposition grand alliance in 2021.
Although it did ally with the Congress at that time, in the run-up to this general elections a narrative, mainly fuelled by the Congress, that caught on in Dhubri was that Ajmal was acting as the ‘B-team’ of the BJP. It is noteworthy that Ajmal and his politics, which address the concerns of Muslims, have consistently faced rhetorical criticism from Sarma and the BJP leadership, particularly during the 2019 and 2021 campaigns.
This time, however, although Sarma did talk initially of not requiring ‘Miya’ (a derogatory reference to Bengali-origin Muslims) votes, in the course of the elections he was seen wooing Muslim voters. In his meetings in Muslim-dominated areas, Sarma drew large crowds and emphasised how Muslims have benefited through the welfare schemes of his government. And yet, after the results, he tweeted that NDA’s impressive performance in Assam was “achieved despite the 40 percent minority population in the state”. At a press conference, he added that the results showed that now Congress has emerged as the sole custodian of Muslim votes in Assam leaving the AIUDF behind.
Despite the political wrangling over the AIUDF and speculation on Muslim voting patterns, the results prompt a question: does Ajmal's significant loss in the newly reconfigured Dhubri constituency signal the beginning of the end for his politics and party? It would be premature to declare Ajmal's political demise, but if the AIUDF’s grip does weaken, it is likely to create a political vacuum, opening up new opportunities. It will be interesting to see which political parties or formations step in to capture the attention of the often vilified, much marginalised Bengali-origin Muslim voters of Assam.
(Abhishek Saha is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of 'No Land’s People: The Untold Story of Assam’s NRC Crisis'. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)