The BJP has pulled out all the stops to penetrate Bodoland, a region that has been out of bounds for mainstream political parties for 15 years.
The Congress was the last mainstream party to win two of the 12 seats across the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), comprising Baksa, Chirang, Kokrajhar and Udalguri districts, in 2001. It refrained from contesting any seat in the region in the next election because of its alliance with the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), which befriended the BJP ahead of the 2016 election before returning to the Congress camp in 2021.
The BJP is contesting four seats in the BTR. The United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), its ally, is contesting the other eight.
“We are confident of planting the BJP flag in the Bodoland area this time,” BJP State president Ranjeet Kumar Dass said. One of the BJP candidates the party is banking on is Biswajit Daimary, who switched over from the BPF and is contesting from the Panery seat.
The BTR has been the BPF’s stronghold, having swept all the seats since 2006 barring the 2011 poll, when the regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), now an ally of the BJP, managed to win a solitary seat.
Despite the loss of the Kalaigaon Assembly seat to the AGP in 2011, the BPF maintained its tally of 12 by winning the Gauripur seat beyond the BTR.
Himanta factor
The BPF’s decision to sever ties with the Congress ahead of the 2016 election largely had to do with Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma quitting the Congress and joining the BJP. But Dr. Sarma and the BPF, specifically its chief and ex-militant Hagrama Mohilary, began drifting apart around the time the Centre signed the new Bodo Peace Accord in January 2020.
This accord, leading to BTR replacing the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts, was signed with a set of extremists who were once rivals of Mr. Mohilary’s outfit and Pramod Boro, the former president of the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU).
Mr. Boro went on to become the president of the UPPL, the BPF’s long-time political rival, and win the December 2020 Bodoland Territorial Council election in alliance with the BJP to end the 17-year reign of Mr. Mohilary as the chief of the council.
Hoping to be the kingmaker in the Congress-led Mahajot , Mr. Mohilary has vowed to teach his former friends a lesson. “We will win the council back and throw the BJP out of power in Assam,” he said.
But the BPF has already suffered a setback in the BTR with its Tamulpur candidate, Rangja Khungur Basumatary, joining the BJP a week before the third and final phase of polling on April 6. He has appealed to voters of the constituency to vote for Tamulpur’s UPPL candidate, Lehu Ram Boro.
The Congress has urged the Election Commission to call off polling in Tamulpur. “The defection has been induced by illegal means,” former Union Law Minister Ashwani Kumar said.
The 9,612 sq km BTR has had a history of unrest since the 1960s when a statehood movement took root and led to the birth of the ABSU in 1967. Upendranath Brahma was the union’s founder.
The movement to “divide Assam 50-50” between the Bodos, the largest plains tribe in the northeast, and the rest took an extremist turn in the 1980s, leading to bloodshed and unrest.
The ABSU carried on a parallel, non-violent movement for statehood.
There are hardly any signs of that movement left across the BTR. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders have been eulogising Mr. Brahma for another “revolution” — that of development Bodoland has allegedly been deprived of under decades of Congress rule in Assam.
