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Journalism of Courage
Five constituencies in central Assam and the Barak Valley will go to polls on Friday, with the balance of demography expected to play a key role in the outcome. Several of the constituencies of Nagaon, Diphu, Darrang-Udalguri, Silchar, and Karimganj have undergone significant changes in last year’s delimitation exercise.
The decisive role expected to be played by Bengali Muslim voters in this phase has borne an unusual sight. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP’s primary campaigner in Assam — who has in the past declared that the BJP “does not need Miya (a pejorative term for Bengali Muslims) votes in 2024” — has been focusing on the large turnouts at his rallies in Bengali Muslim-majority areas such as Dhing, Laharighat, Rupohi, and Hailakandi. “When elections come, I will myself request them not to vote for us. Vote for us only after you follow family planning, stop child marriage, and shed fundamentalism,” Sarma told reporters last October.
On Wednesday, he told a large gathering in Laharighat, a Bengali Muslim majority area in Nagaon, “This is a BJP meeting, you all tell me how many Muslims are here. Outside Assam, people won’t believe that 50,000 Muslims attended a BJP meeting. Today in Assam, everyone has one voice, be it Hindu or Muslim. ‘Ab ki baar, Modi Sarkar (Next time, we will elect a Modi government)’.”
He also claimed that the BJP had given a boost to development “without appeasement”, declaring that the BJP’s welfare schemes were reaching all citizens, including Muslims.
The number of Muslim voters – mostly Bengali-speaking – in Nagaon has increased to well over 50% after the three Assembly segments of Dhing, Rupahihat and Samaguri were transferred to it from the erstwhile Kaliabor seat and other segments were removed. Nagaon was sought by multiple Congress ticket aspirants, including, as per reports, Gaurav Gogoi who later contested from Jorhat after sitting Congress MP Prodyut Bordoloi secured the ticket.
Against Bordoloi, the BJP has fielded former ULFA militant Suresh Bora who jumped ship from the Congress last year, when he was its Nagaon district president.
The Congress won back the seat from the BJP after 20 years when Bordoloi won it in 2019 with a 49.53% vote share. That victory was facilitated by its alliance with Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF, which did not field a candidate in Nagaon in 2019. The AIUDF, which bagged around 25% of the vote share in both 2014 and 2009, has fielded its Dhing MLA Aminul Islam this year after the former allies had a fallout.
Bengali-speaking Muslims also make up a decisive number of voters in other constituencies. At Karimganj in the Barak Valley, they are estimated to outnumber Hindu voters by around two lakh. And yet, Karimganj has never had a Muslim MP as it was reserved for SC candidates till the recent delimitation. Now that it is not reserved, the Congress has lined up Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury, while the AIUDF has fielded Sahabul Islam Choudhury, against the BJP’s sitting MP Kripanath Mallah.
Bengali Muslims also make up a significant number of voters in Darrang-Udalguri, formerly the Mangaldoi constituency, and Silchar. In Silchar, a consolidation of the majority Bengali-Hindu vote and a ramshackle Opposition have made the BJP’s Parimal Suklabaidya the frontrunner. In Darrang-Udalguri, sitting BJP MP Dilip Saikia is being challenged by the Congress’s Madhab Rajbangshi and Durgadas Boro of the Bodoland People’s Front.
In the autonomous district constituency of Diphu — a hilly, ST-reserved seat the BJP had won in 2019 — the party’s Amarsing Tisso is lined up against Joy Ram Engleng of the Congress, Jotson Bey of the Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC), and Jones Ingti Kathar of the APHPC. All candidates are promising to implement Article 244(A) for the creation of an “autonomous state” within Assam.
