SHILLONG: If the phenomenal rise of BJP is one feature of the Lok Sabha election results in Assam, the other is surely the rapid gains by All India United Democratic Front. In fact, a main reason for the debacle of Congress in Assam seems to be that the minorities in the State have deserted Congress for AIUDF.
The AIUDF has won three seats — Barpeta, Dhubri and Karimganj — but candidates of the party have drawn a substantial number of votes in a number of other constituencies, emerging in the third positions.
In two constituencies, Mongoldoi and Nagaon, they appear to have denied Congress victory. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, AIUDF had won in only one seat, Dhubri.
In a minority-dominated district like Mongoldoi, AIUDF candidate Paresh Baishya is in the fourth position, polling 74,710 votes, but Kirip Chaliha of Congress has lost to Ramen Deka of BJP by a small margin of about 23,000 votes. Had the AIUDF votes gone to Congress, the result could have been otherwise.
In another district with a substantial presence of minorities, Nagaon, the Congress and the AIUDF candidates are almost neck-and-neck, polling 350,587 and 314,012 votes while Rajen Gohain of BJP has emerged way ahead with 494,146 votes.
In the prestigious Gauhati seat, the AIUDF has emerged third with 137,254 votes, though here a Congress victory would not have been ensured even if this vote had gone to the latter as the margin of victory of Bijoya Chakraborty is 315,784 votes. It is only in Kaliabor, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s den, that Gaurav Gogoi of Congress could win the seat despite the AIUDF candidate emerging third with 231,295 votes.
The other notable aspect of the Assam result is that AGP, the party of the indigenous people, has fallen behind AIUDF in four seats, emerging in the fourth position. These seats are Gauhati, Kaliabor, Mongoldoi and Nagaon.
According to observers, the minorities could have lost faith in the Tarun Gogoi government because of its failure to protect them in successive incidents of ethnic violence in the Bodoland Territorial Area District, the worst being in 2012 and before that in 2008. The support of minorities is a likely factor behind the win of Naba Kumar Sarania (Hira Sarania) at Kokrajhar.
Only the future can say if the election results in Assam are a pointer to further polarizations along the communal line.