Assam: Stage set for first phase of polling today

The most inscrutable and exciting election in the present round of five Assembly polls is set to begin this Monday in Assam, where three-term Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is taking on the combined might of an emboldened BJP, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) and perfume king Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) in a three-cornered contest.

Along with Tarun Gogoi in Titabor, the star contenders in the first phase of polling on April 4 are the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate and Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal from Majuli and Congress stalwart Paban Singh Ghatobar, a former Union Minister who is fighting his first Assembly election, from Moran, to win back the tea garden worker vote, which had drifted towards the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Opinion polls The opinion polls in the run-up to the polls have by and large mirrored the BJP’s extraordinary performance in the Lok Sabha polls, when it won seven of the 14 seats in the State and cornered 36.86 per cent of the vote share. This was a quantum jump from the Assembly elections in 2011, when the BJP was able to win barely five seats with about 11.47 per cent of the vote. The Congress lost ground in 2014, with just three seats; its vote share shrank from 39.39 per cent in the 2011 Assembly polls to 29.90 per cent in 2014. Along with the BJP, Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF also improved on its vote share from 12.57 per cent in the 2011 polls to 14.98 per cent in 2014; it also won three Lok Sabha seats.

Opinion polls have followed this pattern, with the ABP News-Nielsen predicting 78 seats for the BJP-led alliance with a 44 per cent vote share, and 36 seats for the Congress with a 34 per cent vote share. The same poll predicts 10 seats for the AIUDF with a drop in the vote share to 11 per cent. Other opinion polls, such as those conducted by India TV-C Voter, give the BJP-led alliance 57 seats, Congress 44 seats and the AIUDF 19 seats respectively.

However, field experience in Assam shows that the reality is somewhat more complicated, with the Congress and the BJP-led alliance fighting a neck-and-neck battle in the north-eastern State.

The BJP is doubtless a surging force in the State, with a presence in every constituency, but the Narendra Modi wave is not as strong as it was in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The party has cobbled up a formidable alliance with the Bodos and the AGP and staged a coup of sorts by snatching the Congress’ formidable strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is now seen in almost every election rally that party president Amit Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds. It has also done well to project the soft-spoken tribal leader Sarbananda Sonowal as its chief ministerial candidate to challenge the Ahom domination of Assamese politics symbolised by Tarun Gogoi.

Sarma, in fact, is confident that Gogoi may well lose his own constituency, Titabor, where the BJP has fielded Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, the tea tribe leader who was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Congress stronghold of Jorhat in 2014.

“We have strategically decided to confine the Chief Minister in Titabor. Kamakhya Prasad Tasa will be a tough candidate to defeat. You will see the Congress running for cover in this election,” Himanta Biswa Sarma told BusinessLine during a interaction in Guwahati. Fielding Tasa is also sending a signal in the tea-belt of Upper Assam, a traditional stronghold of the Congress.

Simultaneously, the BJP is hoping that in the Barak Valley, it will benefit from Badruddin Ajmal’s party eating into the Congress’s minority vote share in Karimganj and Hailakandi districts. The BJP has promised to grant citizenship to illegal Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, with a Central notification regularising the entry and stay of non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Widespread discontent However, there are intangibles in this election which may upset the BJP’s applecart. The first is a widespread disgust among the party workers at the entry of Himanta Biswa Sarma –– against whom they had not just fought legal battles but taken up issues in Parliament and on the street. Sarma’s proximity with BJP president Amit Shah and his clout repels the common BJP worker, who views him as an interloper with a dubious reputation.

For instance, in the reserved constituency of Jagiroad near Nelli, the BJP has fielded Biswa Sarma’s loyalist Piyush Hazarika whom the local party workers refer to as “Dada Brigand” or part of “Sarma Syndicate”.

“No one has the courage to tell Amit Shah what this means to us. Our MPs are not protesting because they believe that if Sarbananda Sonowal becomes Chief Minister, they have a chance to become Cabinet ministers. But what about us, the common workers? How can we campaign for these people who represent everything we fought against for most of our political life,” said a BJP worker in Jagiroad, who did not want to be named.

Whether this widespread discontent will result in a situation similar to Delhi where the BJP imposed Kiran Bedi as the party’s chief ministerial candidate and lost is one of the variables that rarely get reflected in the opinion polls.

The second intangible is the shift of the Muslim voter towards the Congress from the AIUDF. While Ajmal still holds substantial ground, Tarun Gogoi’s by and large peaceful reign and the threat of the BJP assuming power does reflect on the ground. In Ajmal’s hometown Hojai, for instance, the Congress’ Ardhendu Kumar Dey is a popular candidate among Muslims.

Outside the Jumma Masjid, on the way to Hojai, a congregation of the mosque committee members was unanimous in its support for the Congress.

“This time, you will see the AIUDF come down to a single digit in Assam. Ajmal is sponsored by Himanta Biswa Sarma and Amit Shah. We believe that he has been planted to divide the Muslim vote so that the BJP can win in Assam. At least in Hojai, we hope that does not happen,” said the elderly Sirajuddin, while his comrades nodded in agreement.

Besides the Muslim shift, the steps taken by Tarun Gogoi to win back the tea tribes since the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 too are being seen as a factor in the Congress’ comeback trail in upper Assam.

Trump card for Congress “He has allotted land rights to tea garden workers and the wages have gone up. Fielding Paban Singh Ghatobar from Moran too is a politically significant step. My feeling is that the Congress will be able to win back some of its lost ground.

Leaders like Bhakt Charan Das are practically camping in the tea gardens,” said Ravi Shankar Ravi, Editor of the Guwahati daily Dainik Purvodaya . Another significant aspect that is often overlooked is the institutional support enjoyed by the Congress among the tea tribes. The Assam Chai Majdoor Sangha, the biggest union of tea garden workers is held by the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC). Tarun Gogoi himself underlined these steps, which he believes will lead to him getting a simple majority. “We are working towards better wages and land rights for the tea garden workers. The Modi wave momentarily swayed the workers. Now they are back with the Congress,” Tarun Gogoi told BusinessLine .

Altogether, it is a tough call with the BJP’s most optimistic internal surveys project between 48-50 seats. The AGP, according to the BJP’s own estimation, is not getting more than 3-4 seats from the 24 that they are contesting. The BPF may get between 7-9 seats. That takes the BJP-led alliance barely to the majority mark in Assam.

The Congress, meanwhile, is confident that Tarun Gogoi’s undiminished popularity along with the shift in the Muslim vote and the tea tribes will give it anywhere between 60-65 seats.