As the electoral amphitheatre descends from Upper Assam and ascends from the Barak Valley to the geographic middle, Lower Assam, it enters a markedly different political terrain — of constituencies which have been the site of three-way contests in the past decade.
Triangular fights are still the order of the day this election, except that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has largely replaced the old regional powerhouse Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in the trinity that includes Congress and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) of Badruddin Ajmal. The old match-up, however, is intact in Assembly Constituency Number 49, Chaygaon, on the south bank of the Brahmaputra, one of the 24 seats the BJP gave the AGP first rights to as part of its alliance deal.
Abdus Salam Fringed by the Brahmaputra in the north and the Ukiam hills in the south, Chaygaon has an electorate of around 1,63,000 spread across three blocks — Chaygaon, Bongaon and Goroimari. The population is roughly split evenly between Hindu and Muslim voters. Hindus are in greater numbers in Chaygaon and Bongaon, and Goroimari has a high density of Muslims. The constituency is set to witness a grudge match between Dr. Kamala Kalita of the AGP and Rekibuddin Ahmed of the Congress, with Derajuddin Ahmed of the AIUDF the spoiler or third contender, depending on whether it’s Congressmen or his own partymen one is talking to.
Dr. Kalita defeated Mr. Ahmed in the 2006 Assembly election, but the latter prevailed in 2011. The AGP candidate’s shadow over the constituency, however, happens to be a long one: a four-time MLA from here and twice Health Minister of Assam, he won from here first in the landmark election of 1985 when a bunch of students’ union leaders led by Prafulla Kumar Mahanta rode the crest of the Assam Agitation to sweep into power.
As the Assam Agitation-era issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh returns centre stage at these polls, The Hindu decided to take the road from Guwahati to Chaygaon town, and further on to Lampara, Jambari, Goroimari, Jarpara, Gumi and back to see if its overarching constructs are shaping the contours of the contest at the grass roots, or whether local dynamics are equally, more, or wholly at play.
Hoping for a district dividend It’s early morning. Vehicles are coursing through National Highway-37 that bisects the town in half as Chaygaon whirs to life. Locals huddle in groups around tea shops. Utpal Kalita, in his late 20s, and Madhab Medhi, a little older, are among the bystanders. The two agree on one thing: constituency development is the core issue. But they agree to disagree on the rest. Mr. Medhi credits the incumbent Congress MLA with having done some work, such as building the Kulsi-Chaygaon road. Utpal Kalita, however, senses a ‘Modi wave’ raging, and rues the fact that the BJP left the constituency for the AGP instead.
In a scenario where a lot hinges on how much of a lead the AGP candidate gets over the Congress’s in Chaygaon and Bongaon and how much of the Goroimari vote the AIUDF candidate manages to wean away from the Congress’s, Mr. Ahmed must thank the Chief Minister for doing his bit. South Kamrup, which straddles much of Chaygaon constituency, is one of the two new districts announced by Tarun Gogoi during Republic Day celebrations this year. The implications are enormous. Locals would now be spared the journey to Amingaon, just off Guwahati, the headquarters of Kamrup (Rural), which Chaygaon was hitherto part of.
Rudra Kumar Chowdhury, Congress Chaygaon Block Committee president, cites the new district creation as a case in point of Mr. Ahmed’s ability to punch above an archetypal MLA’s weight. “Everyone has been promising to build the Chaygaon-Ukiam bridge, but Rekibuddin is the one who finally did it at a cost of Rs. 1,450 crore,” he says. “He has done more in five years than Kamala Kalita in 20.” Mr. Chowdhury appears unaware — or perhaps only too aware — of the irony of his statement given that the BJP-led alliance is promising to deliver in five years what Chief Minister Gogoi did in his fifteen years in office.
Fifty-fifty and changing Bolen Chandra Das, headmaster of the Chaygaon Middle School, however, strikes a cautionary note. The Bodos and the Rabhas are supporting the AGP and not Congress this time, he says. “It’s 60:40 or 65:35 in the Hindu/tribal-dominated areas, but 50:50 overall. If the AIUDF eats into the Congress’s vote share in the Goroimari area, the AGP has the edge,” he says.
Kalyani Das, a loom weaver of Lampara feels likewise, adding that as Health Minister, Kamala Kalita had done a lot of work in the area. Floods, unemployment and women’s safety are issues for her. Illegal immigrants? “I think illegal immigration is still on in the Goroimari area but there is no enmity between Hindus and Muslims as such.”
An Industrial Growth Centre with food processing units, packaging plants etc. is partially up and running in Chatabari, on the road from Lampara to Goroimari, but the locals are enraged over the centre also housing a distillery, Brahmaputra Biochem Factory, and the north-east Bongaon AGP unit is making sure there’s enough noise over it. “Locals staged a protest sit-in on February 26 demanding the factory’s closure and five people were injured in police firing,” say Kanak Kalita and Nazrul Ali, who are manning the AGP kiosk in Jambari, Bongaon.
Tactical voting? Split wide open It’s the Nazrul Alis that Akkas Ali Ahmed, English teacher, Majortop Higher Secondary School in Goroimari, cites to discount the prospect of en bloc or tactical voting. “People in Goroimari didn’t accept Kamala Kalita in the polarised 1985 election but he had pockets of support among Muslims during his subsequent victories,” he says. The AIUDF, he adds, had made some inroads in the area in the local body elections, winning three out of eight panchayats, but defections to the Congress left them with the presidentship of only one now. And to top it, a local aspirant, Abdul Qayyum Al Aman, who had contested as a candidate of the now defunct United Minorities Front against Kamala Kalita in the 1985 election, was ignored.
Seated at the AIUDF pavilion in Goru Bazaar, Goroimari, Minhaz Alam, the party’s district youth wing secretary, insists that the campaign is going strong. “We will complete the NRC [National Register of Citizens] update, provincialise venture schools…,” he lists out AIUDF’s promises. But Congress supporters are legion in Goroimari — labourer Hasan Ali lauds the current MLA for bringing an Industrial Training Institute to Majortop; Ayub Ali, who teaches at the Barakhat-Achalpara Lower Primary School, says the rebuilt Goroimari-Gumi-Chaygaon road allows people to zip to Guwahati in an hour and twenty minutes; and lottery ticket-seller Abdul Halim says it will be “ beimani ” (dishonesty) not to vote for him after a concrete bridge has come up over the Kolohikax river. It took Jamal Ali of Merganda village to puncture this idyll. “This was a Congress village. But it is now split 50:50. That’s because dalals (brokers/middlemen) have taken over the State’s delivery machinery. The government gives us financial assistance of Rs. 50,000 towards building pucca houses, but we have to part with Rs. 15,000 to the dalal in order to get it,” he alleges, pointing to a half-built brick house on his neighbour’s plot.
‘A for Assam’, ‘Development, fast-paced development, and all-round development’ are Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s additions to the State lexicon through the course of the two-phase elections. Chief Minister Gogoi responded with his own ‘ Punhoro bosoror bisshhax, punhoro bososor bikax ’ (Fifteen years of faith, fifteen years of development). While the Prime Minister took the high ground, he left it to BJP president Amit Shah, chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal, and campaign committee convener Himanta Biswa Sharma to whip up hysteria over the influx of outsiders threatening the very existence of ‘sons of the soil’.
At a small roadside meeting in Jarpara, Noorie Ahmed, the Congress candidate’s wife, is holding forth. “The road that Kamala Kalita takes to seek votes was built by my husband,” she says in a mix of Assamese and Hindi. The microphone is garbling her words; she discards it. “He calls us Bangladeshis… this is also our mati (land). It’s a battle for our swabhiman (pride) as well. A vote for the AIUDF will go to the AGP, a vote for the AGP will go to the BJP. Can you answer Allah if you vote for them, the people who killed thousands in Gujarat? Vote for your brother, Rekibuddin.”
Harvesting hysteria, it appears, cuts both ways. As does the development narrative. But it’s the hyperlocal that makes an Assembly election the sum of all things.
abdus.salam@thehindu.co.in
