Himanta’s BJP gets a new ally, churning Assam’s political landscape months ahead of Assembly polls

Charan Boro, a two-time BPF MLA from the Majbat constituency, took oath as a minister on Saturday. With his induction, the Assam cabinet now has 15 ministers from the BJP, two from the AGP, and one each from the UPPL and the BPF.

After the oath-taking ceremony, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that with this, the BPF is formally part of the state’s NDA government and that the BJP will consider its alliance options for the upcoming assembly elections over the next two months.

“UG Brahma (UPPL leader Urkhao Gwra Brahma) is part of the council of ministers. We had made our friendship with the UPPL for the 2021 election. For the 2026 election, we will talk anew with the AGP, too, the BPF, and we will have to speak to the UPPL, too. Within November and December, we will have to have our discussions about 2026,” he said.

Of the 126 seats in the Assam legislative assembly, 10 are from the Bodoland Territorial Region. In 2021, six of these had been won by the UPPL, which had contested as part of the NDA, and four by the BPF, which had contested as part of a Congress-led ‘Mahajot.’

Changing equations

Political equations between the BJP and the Bodo parties have oscillated dramatically in the last five years. The BPF, which had been in power at the BTC since 2005, had been an ally of the BJP when it came to power in Assam in 2016. However, even though the BPF was the single largest party in the 2020 BTC election, the BJP instead tied up with the UPPL to form the BTC. Consequently, the BPF joined hands with the Congress for the 2021 Assam Assembly elections and the BJP with the UPPL. The UPPL and BJP also had a seat-sharing arrangement for last year’s Lok Sabha elections. However, things have changed again after the BPF swept the BTC polls last month, winning 28 of 40 seats.

BPF supremo Hagrama Mohilary has been clear that he will ally with whoever is in power at the state level “in the interest of the BTC”, which is largely because the purse strings of the council are in Dispur’s control.

“BPF is a party that always works in the interest of the BTC. If we want to make BTC prosper, we have to work together with the state government. So the interest is just one thing, the progress of the people of BTC and for that we will work with the NDA… We are in the NDA now,” said Mohilary on Saturday.

Earlier this week, Mohilary also announced that BJP member Bijit Gwra Narzary is likely to be appointed as Deputy Speaker of BTC.

“My relationship with Hagrama Mohilary is a very longstanding one. In 2021, for some reason, there was a gap between us. But around three months after I became Chief Minister, by September-October, we met again and resolved it. In the last four and a half years of running the government, BPF has always been supporting us. In the Rajya Sabha election, they always vote for us. And I kept our personal relationship going,” said CM Sarma.

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