Sarma’s Script: The relentless rise of the Assam CM

In his speech at the rally, Sarma had threatened to “break the backbone of Bangladeshi miyas” while, in the same breath, promised his women audience a litre of subsided mustard oil, an increase in their monthly subsidies under government schemes, and two lakh government jobs to their children in his second term as Chief Minister. “Mama will take care…,” he had assured them.

This persona of an approachable and benevolent uncle, who “helps” and gives gifts to his “mothers”, “sisters”, “bhagin (nephews)” and “bhagini (nieces)” is an integral part of the personality cult of Himanta Biswa Sarma. It’s an image fortified through endless “mama content” on Assamese social media and meme pages, one that helps to soften the sharp edges of a man who has made vitriol-spewing targeted at Bengali-speaking Muslims a defining feature of his public identity.

This has led both the BJP and the Congress-led Opposition to frame the upcoming April 9 election around a single, stark choice: do voters approve of Sarma’s leadership and style enough to continue with him, or do they want to reject it?

In his speech at the rally, Sarma had threatened to “break the backbone of Bangladeshi miyas” while, in the same breath, promised his women audience a litre of subsided mustard oil, an increase in their monthly subsidies under government schemes, and two lakh government jobs to their children in his second term as Chief Minister.

Snakes and ladders

Over four decades, as 57-year-old Sarma climbed one political rung after another, he did so with single-minded ambition.

A teenager who worked his way up the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU); a student-politician who caught the eye of then Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia and proceeded to make himself valuable to the Congress by helping it chip away at the AASU’s dominance in student politics; a young Congress MLA who surpassed senior colleagues to become Tarun Gogoi’s “number two” and an alternative power centre in the party; a Congress dissident who engineered the first-ever BJP government in the state in 2016; the BJP’s main man in the Northeast who made his move to replace Assam’s first BJP Chief Minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, after the 2021 election; and now, as the Chief Minister whose statements and hardline policies have polarised the state like never before.

But through all these iterations of the man, people who have known Sarma over the years agree on a few defining qualities. He is, they say, someone who studies and really knows his business, a “master manager” of people and relations, someone who is enterprising and competent, and in possession of an uncanny “instinct” that makes invaluable to those who hold the key to political power.

Those active in student politics in the 1980s – when the first Asom Gana Parishad (born out of the AASU) government was in power in the state – say Sarma, then still a school student, would be a regular at the AASU head office in Guwahati’s Cotton College. Later, as an 18-year-old first-year degree student at Cotton College, in 1987, he was elected assistant general secretary and in 1988, won as general secretary. His political acumen was there for all to see.

“He already had a lot of political maturity and a knack for strategy. He reached out to first-year students, who were still forming their views, for support. He was from Guwahati, and therefore a day-scholar. But he joined the hostel in 1987 because the mobilisation and support of hostel students was an important factor in college elections,” says Rintu Goswami, now an advocate in Jorhat, who lost the general secretary election to Sarma in 1988.

Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma takes part in a ‘Jana Ashirwad Yatra’, in Barpeta on Tuesday. (Image source: @himantabiswa/x)

“Himanta would make gestures like giving away pens to students during exam time. He also observed Indian politics closely and would tell us about politics in the South Indian states and the regional political dynamics there, at a time when the rest of us did not really bother to follow these things… While other students would go and watch movies, participate in cultural programmes, do theatre, Himanta did politics 24 hours long,” says Goswami.

Sarma would go on to be elected general secretary of the Cotton students’ union thrice. He was also general secretary of the AASU-affiliated All Guwahati Students Union, but in 1991, a sharp rift with the AASU led him to change course.

That was the time when Congress Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia was trying to find a foothold among young people, a constituency that had distanced itself from the party during the Assam Agitation of 1979-85. Saikia found the man he was looking for in Sarma.

“Sarma helped Saikia make inroads into institutions in the state, managing relationships, challenging the AASU dominance,” says Sushanta Talukdar, who was vice-president of the Cotton students’ union in 1990-1991.

Goswami says one of the ideas Sarma gave Saikia was the setting up of a fund to help college unions, a project that helped him make connections with students and unions across the state.

This trajectory – his proximity to Saikia and induction into the Congress after turning on the AASU – almost mirrors the dramatic developments of 2015-2016, when he would turn on the Congress and help the BJP get a foothold in Assam.

Sarma went on to contest his first Assembly election in 1996 on a Congress ticket from Guwahati’s Jalukbari seat at the age of 27. He lost to senior AGP leader Bhrigu Phukan, who won the seat for the third consecutive time.

But Sarma won the Jalukbari seat every election after that, his victory margin increasing with every successive election – from 10,019 votes when he defeated Phukan in 2001 to over 1 lakh votes against Congress’s Ramen Borthakur in 2021.

By the time Tarun Gogoi became Chief Minister in 2001, Sarma’s ‘guru’ Saikia had passed away. In 2002, Sarma was made a junior minister in Gogoi’s Cabinet and he proved his resourcefulness to his new mentor straightaway.

Tarun Gogoi with Himanta Biswa Sarma. (Express archive)

“He was given a till-then unglamorous ministry, the Planning & Development Department, but under him, it became an important department. For example, one of the biggest schemes of the government, giving computers to meritorious students, was done by his department, not the education department,” says senior journalist Prasanta Rajguru.

Along with political wiles, his administrative capabilities are widely recognised.

“For him, the day is for political work. And the night, when the calls stop coming, is for administrative work,” says retired IAS officer Swapnanil Baruah, who served as secretary to Sarma when he was health minister.

“He would come to the office every two days, late at night, and go through all the files. He would make you sit down and ask you what the issues are. Schemes, budgets, prices… he would want to know everything. He didn’t want to be dependent on bureaucrats, but would expect them to deliver the results he wanted to see,” he says, adding that he was prone to “extreme micromanagement”.

Sarma thrived under Tarun Gogoi, given the latter’s proclivity to delegate and trust his ministers. Over the three Gogoi governments, Sarma held a range of portfolios, including Health, Education, Finance, and Public Works.

“Many of the leaders who grew under Tarun da – Himanta, Ajanta Neog, Pradyot Bordoloi and Rakibul Hussain – were multiple-term ministers who were given a free hand. But Himanta was definitely the most hardworking… He handled the duties he was given efficiently and became (Goigoi’s) most trusted minister,” says former MP Paban Singh Ghatowar, who was already a senior Congress leader when Sarma first became an MLA.

Sarma and Hussain (the only one from among the ministers Ghatowar  mentioned who is still in the Congress) were increasingly in charge of affairs, especially as Gogoi’s health took a downward turn in 2010. Gogoi entrusted the two with the party’s campaign for the 2011 state election, around the time Sarma began to push for his turn and went about building a “lobby” of young MLAs around him.

The bitter fall-out with the Congress that followed the 2011 election, when it became clear that Gogoi was not going to help Sarma nurture his transparent dream to ascend to the Chief Minister’s position, and instead had plans for his son Gaurav, is now a political folktale.

Over four decades, as 57-year-old Sarma climbed one political rung after another, he did so with single-minded ambition.

Jumping ship to the BJP

After he joined the BJP, he swiftly proved his place in the new party. He was not only a core part of the team – along with then BJP president Amit Shah, party general secretary Ram Madhav and Sarbananda Sonowal – that led the party to its first-ever electoral victory in Assam in 2016, but was quick to adopt the language of Hindutva politics and adapt it to the demographic anxieties in Assam.

Sonowal, a former AASU and AGP leader who had joined the BJP in 2011, became the Chief Minister, but Sarma had not made the big switch to remain “Number 2” again. Holding the important ministries of Finance, Health, Education and Public Works during a term marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-CAA protests, he was known to wield as much power as, if not more than, the mild-mannered Sonowal.

After yet another electoral win for the BJP in 2021 and about a week of uncertainty over whether Sonowal would remain Chief Minister, Sarma finally trumped him and got the chair he had long been waiting for.

Journalist Rajguru believes the ouster of Sonowal was Sarma’s biggest “masterstroke”. “He seized power in a party where the central command is everything,” he says.

A ‘one-man-show’

Now as Chief Minister, Sarma runs a one-man show, say senior officials.

He is the face of the government, making all key announcements. Except on rare occasions, Sarma is the one to address the media after the weekly Cabinet meetings. He is also the one to answer all questions, from local administrative matters to national politics.

“Assam must be the only state where even the date of matric exam (school-leaving exam) results is announced by the Chief Minister,” says a political observer. Every room in the Chief Minister’s block in the secretariat has a pair of red and green lights near the door. When the red light turns on – often in the evening or night – it means that Sarma is in the building and that officers need to be prepared.

A senior bureaucrat says that under Sarma, work has taken on an unprecedented urgency. “He pushes us to pursue central projects like they are state projects. He knows the details of which bureaucrat is in which central ministry. He pushes that central bureaucrat, then he pushes us, then he follows up with the Union Minister.”

Over the years, the government has drawn criticism for the overreaching arm of the state police – from arresting Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani in 2022 over a tweet against PM Modi to registering FIRs against Delhi-based journalists Siddharth Varadarajan, Karan Thapar and Abhisar Sharma under the sedition-like Section 152 of the BNS for critical coverage. For over a year, as a Special Investigative Team of the police investigated Sarma’s allegations of his bete noir Gaurav Gogoi being a “Pakistan agent”, it was the Chief Minister himself, not the police, who shared all the information with the public.

The Opposition believes they know where Sarma is most vulnerable – the question of his ‘mati’ (land).

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma

His wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma is the owner of Assam’s largest media house, Pride East Entertainment, and her business interests have extended to a private school and resort. Sarma’s election affidavit records a two-fold increase in their combined assets over the past five years. While he filed multiple defamation cases against Opposition leaders, including Gaurav Gogoi, Jitendra Singh, and others over their statements and allegations, he used the benevolent ‘mama’ card to tackle questions from the media.

“Whatever Riniki Bhuyan Sarma has owned will be given to the people of Assam, no one else will take it. Whatever she has, so far, has been dedicated to the people — the broadcast channel News Live would also be willed for the people of Assam, nothing would be kept for my son and daughter,” he said in 2024.

Yet, the signature style of both his statements and governance has been aggression, celebrated during campaign rallies this election as bulldozers accompany his processions. As is well documented, the bulk of this aggression is directed towards the state’s Bengali-origin Muslims, derided as Bangladeshis and “infiltrators”. He has pursued a ruthless policy of pushing ‘declared foreigners’ across the international border into Bangladesh; carried out mass evictions; and issued threats of disenfranchisement.

Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma (File Photo)

Some who know him say he “goes the extra mile” with his hardline statements to compensate for the fact that he is not “an original BJP man”. It is a point the Congress continues to belabour. At a campaign rally last week, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accused Sarma of “spitting where he eats” after being “born and raised” in the Congress. And then, pointing to the circle of former Congressmen who surround Sarma, Gaurav Gogoi called this an election between “the Himanta-led Congress and a Congress led by Tarun Gogoi’s ideals.”

Assam BJP spokesperson Ranjib Sharma, however, says party workers no longer see Sarma as a “Congress import”. “About 80% of the district presidents are RSS people. Because of his level of organisational engagement and how he has thrown himself into ideology and philosophy, that disconnect is not there. When he speaks, he speaks like an old RSS man,” he says, adding that while Sarma usually visits the state BJP headquarters at least a couple of times a month, he is there almost every night during election season.

With the kind of hold Sarma has over the government and the party, unlike 2021, there is no ambiguity about who the party’s face for this election is.