The Congress has struggled with an acute perception problem in Assam after ceding power to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2016 and desperately tying up with the State’s third key player, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) of Badruddin Ajmal, in the run-up to the next Assembly election in 2021.
While the grand old party severed ties with the AIUDF soon after the 2021 Assembly election with the tie-up not yielding the winning numbers, the naming of Rakibul Hussain as the party candidate against Mr. Ajmal in Dhubri is its boldest declaration yet that it has no truck whatsoever with the primarily immigrant Muslim-backed party.
The party has been constantly taunted by its former senior leader and first-time Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of having relegated itself to a refuge of ‘Bangladeshis’, mostly a misnomer for Bengali-origin immigrants dating back to colonial times. The barbs have pushed the Congress on the back foot in the State in recent years because the perception has some currency among sections of the Assamese electorate, especially the caste Hindus.
A lightweight candidate would have again fuelled allegations by the ruling alliance of a tacit understanding between the principal Opposition parties. After all, Mr. Ajmal, seeking re-election from the Dhubri seat for the fourth consecutive term, has consistently secured more than 40% of the total votes polled in the constituency since 2009. Mr. Hussain is no also-ran. Currently the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, he is a five-term MLA since 2001 and had served as Minister in multiple Tarun Gogoi-led Congress governments in the State.
Broader coalition
While it’s true that the Congress’s 2021 Mahajot alliance ran the Mitrajot combine of BJP, Asom Gana Parishad and United People’s Party Liberal close in terms of vote share, securing around 43.5% compared to their opponents’ 44.4%, the NDA sweep in Upper Assam was a disconcerting sign of the ethnic Assamese, associated communities such as the Morans, Misings, Rabhas and Deoris, and the tea tribes moving away.
The loss coincided with Muslim candidates making up 16 of the Congress’s 29 entrants to the Assembly; with the AIUDF winning 15 seats, the overall tally of 31 Muslim MLAs was the second highest since 1983. In sum, the Congress-AIUDF victories were restricted to parts of the Barak Valley in southern Assam, a cluster of seats in central Assam and the bulk of Lower Assam constituencies barring the autonomous Bodo areas and constituencies around Guwahati.
Any path for the Congress clawing back into the reckoning in Assam, whether now or in the future, has to factor in a broader coalition than the BJP’s Hindu-Hindutva mosaic. The deft redrawing of boundaries in the delimitation exercise concluded in August 2023 and shifting of some reserved constituencies to Muslim-majority areas is projected to pare down the community’s influence from around 35 of the State’s 126 Assembly seats to less than 25 in 2026. With plans up ahead to also reserve seats for the ‘indigenous’ Assamese, the Congress will perforce have to compete with the BJP on turfs the latter has made major inroads into since the 2014 general election. The delimitation-induced shift of MP Gaurav Gogoi — its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha — to Jorhat constituency, and the likelihood of the party backing former student leader and Assam Jatiya Parishad chief Lurinjyoti Gogoi against Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal in Dibrugarh as common candidate of the 16-party United Opposition Forum alliance, could put the Congress back in play in Upper Assam.
Twin objectives
Mr. Hussain’s candidature also serves a second objective besides the obvious signalling to the caste Hindu voter. It is an announcement of intent on the part of the Congress that it will take the AIUDF head-on in the latter’s pockets of influence as well. Without an alliance, any Congress expansion is predicated upon AIUDF shrinkage. It’s something the two parties know all too well — Mr. Ajmal has fielded his sitting MLA and party general secretary Aminul Islam against incumbent Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi in Nagaon.
In 2019, the BJP had won nine of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the State while Congress bagged three, AIUDF one and a former ULFA militant won in Kokrajhar. This was an improvement for the ruling party from 2014 when it won seven seats, and came at the AIUDF’s expense. The Congress tally has remained unchanged at three. Improving the count this time is an uphill task but the party’s Lok Sabha picks indicate a bid to future-proof its relevance in a changing electoral landscape.
