Assam Assembly polls: The method behind BJP's 'immigrant' narrative

The 5 kilometre (km)-long Maharaja Prithu flyover, Assam’s longest, and Kumar Bhaskar Verma Setu, a bridge over the Brahmaputra river, both inaugurated weeks before the announcement of the Assembly poll schedule for the state, symbolise the urban transformation that Guwahati, the northeastern state’s largest urban centre, has witnessed in the 10 years of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule.

 

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) hopes to win most of the seats in Guwahati and its suburbs on the back of the significant investments in expansion of road infrastructure and flyovers, and the introduction of a reliable government-run bus transport since 2016. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has represented Jalukabari, which falls within the Guwahati Lok Sabha seat, consecutively since 2001 (as a Congress candidate in 2001, 2006, and 2011; and as BJP’s in 2016 and 2021).

 

Jorhat, another big urban centre of Assam, has also had the state government push road and flyover construction. In Jorhat, Congress’ Gaurav Gogoi is taking on the sitting legislator of the BJP, Hitendra Nath Goswami, who has represented the seat five times, including as an Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) member in 1991, 1996, and 2001; and as a BJP candidate in 2016 and 2021.

 

Interestingly, during election rallies, the BJP leadership focusses more on the party’s resolve to “drive out infiltrators”, an allusion to the Bengali-speaking Muslims of Bangladeshi origin, and remove them from the land “the community has encroached upon”. The references to the infrastructure development in the state that the party’s government has carried out are secondary.

 

According to BJP strategists, there is method to the party’s election narrative around the “threat of infiltrators” with an eye not merely on the Assam Assembly polls, which it believes it will win with an unprecedented mandate, but also the West Bengal polls. The poll schedule is such that Assam’s 126 seats will poll in a single phase on April 9. It is a rare single-phase election in Assam in recent decades as that state has usually had at least a two-phased election, one each of Upper Assam and Lower Assam. West Bengal, meanwhile, will vote a fortnight after Assam in a two-phased election on April 23 and 29. The BJP consistently raised the issue of “infiltrators” during its Bihar Assembly polls campaign last year, and it is all set to feature prominently in the next round of Assembly polls, especially the biggest one: the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, scheduled for February-March 2027.

 

As much as 34.22 per cent of Assam’s population comprises Muslims. Of the 34.22 per cent, 30 per cent are estimated to be Bengali-speaking Bangladeshi-origin Muslims, also called “Miyas” in Assam. The rest are indigenous Assamese-speaking Muslims, including communities like Gorias, Moriyas, Jolhas, Deshis, and Syeds. The BJP has not fielded a single Muslim candidate, but interestingly, its ally, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), has put up 13 Muslim candidates of the 26 seats that it is contesting. Critics, such as advocate Upamanyu Hazarika of the Prabrajan Virodhi Manch — an organisation that has fought against immigrants encroaching on indigenous land — termed the NDA’s strategy as lacking in ideology and symbolising “mercenary politics”.

 

The AGP’s fielding of 13 Muslims, including two who joined from the Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), is intended to eat into the Congress’ potential support base, especially when the Ajmal-led party is in decline. Ajmal lost the Dhubri Lok Sabha polls in 2024. It was a seat that Ajmal had represented thrice since 2009 but in 2024 he could secure a mere 18 per cent of the votes polled, with the Congress’ Rakibul Hussain bagging almost 60 per cent of the votes and winning by a record margin of a million votes.

 

If the AGP has fielded Muslim candidates in the seats in Lower Assam, where the Congress hopes to sweep, another surprise of the elections is the entry of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). An ally of the Congress, the JMM leads their alliance government in Jharkhand. The JMM has fielded 16 candidates in Upper Assam, where the tea tribes hail from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which effectively makes the contests in these seats three-cornered. The Congress-led alliance hopes to make gains here because of the BJP’s failure to grant these communities Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has fielded candidates on 21 seats and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on 18, and they could potentially gnaw into the anti-incumbency votes against the BJP. On as many as nine seats, including in Dispur, rebel candidates of the BJP are contesting, making these into triangular fights.

 

In his back-to-back election rallies in Barpeta, Hojai, and Dibrugarh in Assam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday spoke of the BJP-led state government’s focus on infrastructure development, but centred his attack on the Congress “singing Pakistan tune”, alleging that the party only helped infiltrators for vote bank politics, and allowed them to settle on land belonging to “sattras”, temples, and tribal communities, besides the Kaziranga National Park. Sattras are unique 15th-century Vaishnavite monastery-like institutions in Assam. “It is the BJP that is freeing these lands from the encroachers, and also giving land rights to the indigenous people of Assam,” he said.