With 11 victories for the NDA and three for the Congress, the distribution of Lok Sabha seats in Assam this time remained similar to that in 2019 despite the considerable changes in the boundaries and demographics of the constituencies owing to last year’s delimitation exercise. While the NDA bagged the majority of seats – the BJP is set to win nine, and its regional partners United People’s Party Liberal and Asom Gana Parishad are poised for victory in Kokrajhar and Barpeta respectively – the Congress’s wins will be a major morale boost for the party in a state where it has been beset by multiple setbacks. The most significant victory for the Congress emerged from the most keenly watched contest in the state – the Upper Assam Jorhat seat, where the Congress’s Gaurav Gogoi went up against the incumbent BJP MP Tapan Gogoi. Gogoi contested in Jorhat after the seat he represented twice and his family’s pocket borough – Kaliabor – was drastically transformed in the delimitation exercise, and the BJP ran a particularly vigorous campaign there, led by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has a history of bad blood with Gogoi. Gogoi’s victory has also opened wide the dissent within a section of the Assam BJP itself. This was suggested by the fact that BJP MLA Mrinal Saikia congratulated Gogoi for his victory. “The outcome proved that money, big publicity, overdoses of leaders and arrogant speeches do not always help to win elections,” Saikia had said. It was also a Congress candidate who clinched the most resounding victory in the state, with Rakibul Hussain defeating sitting MP and AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal by a margin of over 9.8 lakh votes in Dhubri. The defeat of Badruddin, who has represented the seat since 2009, was a major blow to the AIUDF, which lost all the three seats it contested. Even though the party’s primary voter base is among the Bengali Muslim community, Badruddin’s loss comes in a seat where Bengali Muslims are estimated to account for around 85 per cent of voters. This consolidation of Bengali Muslim votes behind the Congress was also seen in another seat, Nagaon, where the incumbent Pradyut Bordoloi secured a comfortable victory despite the constituency seeing a triangular contest between the Congress, the BJP and the AIUDF. Apart from Jorhat, the BJP retained the other seats it won in 2019. This included “Assamese heartland” seats – Darrang-Udalguri (earlier known as Mangaldoi), Dibrugarh, Diphu (earlier Autonomous Council), Guwahati, Karimganj, Lakhimpur, Silchar, and Sonitpur (earlier Tezpur). It has additionally also won the new Kaziranga seat, which has been drawn out from the former Kaliabor seat. Despite winning a clear majority of seats in the state, the BJP has not performed as well as it had hoped – its leaders had asserted that the NDA would win 13 out of 14 seats. The BJP’s chief campaigner in Assam, CM Sarma, hailed the outcome, saying: “The NDA has bettered its overall vote share to nearly 46 per cent, a huge jump from the 39 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 44 per cent in the 2021 Assembly elections. This we have achieved despite the 40 per cent minority population in our state.” Assam Congress chief Bhupen Borah, speaking on the outcomes in Assam and the rest of the Northeast, said, “The Northeast was once a Congress stronghold, and in December when the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra travelled through Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Assam, we assessed that we would be able to recover our lost group. The people of the region are secular by nature, but some sections had joined hands with the BJP under pressure.” “In Assam, we were fighting against two communal forces – BJP and AIUDF – and we have a moral victory by defeating the AIUDF in all seats it contested in. Jorhat was a major prestige battle and the people of Upper Assam have given a message there,” he said.
