Did a split in the Muslim vote in Assam between the Congress and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) contribute to the victory of the National Democratic Alliance? The majority that the NDA gained in a State with at least 49 Muslim-majority constituencies across eight districts has led to serious questioning of that old theory of en bloc Muslim vote.
Of these 49 constituencies (culled from census data), the BJP won 15 seats, the Congress 14 and the AIUDF 12 and the NDA allies Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) five and Bodoland People’s Front two. These are results for 48 out of the 49 seats. How does this break down?
Bhanu Joshi of the Centre for Policy Research, part of a team that travelled and studied the Assam polls and shared their findings with The Hindu, says there has been a split in the vote between the Congress and the AIUDF and in certain cases votes have gone to the BJP and the AGP as well.
Strategic voting
From the preliminary findings, Mr. Joshi says, it would seem that strategic voting has taken place among the Muslims, but not for the reasons usually attributed to it, which is to keep the BJP out. “For example, in a constituency called Bokakhat in Lower Assam where the Muslim vote is decisive, Atul Bora of the AGP won by a margin of over 40,000 votes against the Congress’s Arun Phukan. How does one explain that except that there is a sophisticated voting public that is making choices based on different kinds of information,” he says.
The findings, he admits, are based on census data on religion that is available at sub-district levels and has to then be placed over Assembly constituencies to arrive at some understanding of religious demographics in the area.
The delimitation after 1977 also makes it difficult to know the exact proportion of minority votes in each constituency within a district, he says.
“For example, if a district has seven or eight Assembly constituencies, the minority population may be concentrated in three of these, and less significant in the other four. We haven’t gone into booth-level data yet.”
The BJP’s own internal assessment places more faith in the fact that its alliance with the AGP and the BPF consolidated a vote base in its favour in these areas. According to this study for internal consumption, the party has classified 22 seats as having more than 60 per cent of Muslim population; of these, the NDA got only four, the Congress 10 and the AIUDF got eight.
In areas where the proportion of Muslim voters is around 45-55 per cent, mapping to around 17 seats, the NDA got nine, the Congress five and the AIUDF got three.
The final category of constituencies, where Muslims account for 30-40 per cent of the vote — around 19 seats — the NDA did well and got 15 seats, the Congress got two and the UDF two. “We got a one per cent hike in voting percentage in 2016 over 2014, although the BJP’s individual score is nearly five per cent less. The AGP has gained that five per cent. The Congress on its own has gained over one per cent in 2016 over what it polled in 2014,” said a senior BJP strategist. These two assessments may demonstrate, ultimately, that decoding this victory may take a while.
*Corrections & Clarifications:
The earlier version of this article has mentioned that the BJP has classified 29 seats as having more than 60 per cent of Muslim population. The correct number is 22. The error has been rectifed.
