Shots fired at poll procession, Congress and BJP trade charges as Assam’s Samaguri sees night of violence

On Saturday night, the BJP MLA from Barhampur constituency, Jitu Goswami, alleged that his vehicle was shot at during a procession at Mari Puthikhaiti village in Samaguri constituency.

“We were doing a procession from a nearby BJP office to another BJP office. On the way, stones were thrown at us from the house of a Congress worker named Ismail Hussain. After that, our car was attacked with bullets. Several cars were damaged and several of our workers were injured,” he told reporters.

Congress, however, alleged that the bullets were fired by BJP workers who were in the procession. Imam Uddin, the son of Ismail Hussain – the Congress worker named by the BJP – was injured allegedly in the firing.

Congress MP Rakibul Hussain, the father of Congress’s Samaguri candidate Tanzil Hussain, visited Imam Uddin’s house late at night. He said, “BJP leaders and workers have shot at a Congress office and they are, in turn, complaining about the person at whom they have shot… If the firing was done by Congress workers, how is it possible that someone from the Congress side was shot at? …. What were they doing here at 9.30 pm at night in the first place? Where did they get permission for this?”

Nagaon SP Swapnaneel Deka said that as of Sunday afternoon, while two complaints have been filed, the police have not registered an FIR and are examining the claims.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma hit out against the alleged attack on Jitu Goswami.

“The real question is, why has the Congress stooped to such depths in this by-election? It’s not just fear of defeat, but the desperation to hold on to their core vote bank that drives them to such extremes. Justice will be served, and we will not allow anyone to sabotage or undermine our democratic process,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile, an Independent candidate, Musabbir Ali Ahmed, also alleged that he was assaulted in a separate incident on Saturday night.

SP Deka said, “The candidate has said that he was in his home in Nagaon and that some people called him outside. He said that these people beat him and threatened him to withdraw from the election. The matter is being investigated.”

Samaguri is one of five Assembly constituencies in Assam in which by-elections will be conducted on November 13. The seat, which has a sizable minority population, became vacant after Rakibul Hussain, who represented the seat for five terms, was elected from the Dhubri parliamentary seat. Hussain’s 26-year-old son, Tanzil, is the Congress candidate this time, and he will take on the BJP’s state general secretary Diplu Ranjan Sarma.

State Congress spokesperson Mehdi Alam Bora accused the BJP of “trying to see whether muscle power can work for them in the 2026 Assembly election”. “They are trying to see how much they will be able to make the administration work for them. Samaguri is a constituency where they are going to lose, but they are trying to see if they will be able to win here with muscle power,” he said.

Assam BJP spokesperson Manoj Baruah called the violence “unfortunate”.

“In Assam’s political tradition, we don’t have instances of this kind of violence. It has reached the extent of an elected MLA being shot at. That can’t be accepted. We hope that there will not be such a situation in the future, and we should all come to a consensus,” he said.