By Barun Das Gupta
By-elections were held to three seats of the Assam Assembly on September 13. Apparently, it was quits for all the three contesting parties, the Congress, the BJP and the AIUDF, each winning one seat. But behind the apparent, the reality is very different. The trend is that Muslim voters in Assam are deserting the Congress and gravitating to the AIUDF. The Hindu voters are also moving away from the Congress and consolidating behind the BJP. This is true in spite of the fact that the Congress candidate won the Lakhipur seat by defeating his BJP rival by 9,172 votes.
The reverse was the case at Silchar, a traditional Congress stronghold which had sent former Union Minister Santosh Mohan Dev to Lok Sabha time after time. In the Assembly bye-election, the BJP wrested the prestigious seat from the Congress. Dilip Kumar Paul of the BJP, defeated the Congress candidate Arun Dutta Mazumdar by a huge margin of 37,441 votes. This despite the frantic efforts of minister Gautam Roy who had gone all out to retain the seat. The BJP had filed an FIR with the police alleging Roy was openly distributing money among the voters.
Some Congressmen are attributing the defeat partly to the infighting in the party. Santosh Dev and Gautam Roy belong to two rival factions. Reportedly, workers loyal to Dev had not taken part in the campaigning. Roy had to bring in workers from other places like Karimganj to work for Dutta Mazumdar. But this does not explain away the margin of victory for the BJP. There is no denying the fact that a huge chunk of Hindu voters are now with the BJP. There is a sub-text to this. According to some poll observers, a section of Muslim voters who used to vote for the Congress, this time voted for the BJP.
The only by-election held in the Brahmaputra Valley, that for Jamunamukh seat, was won handsomely by the AIUDF candidate, son of party president Badruddin Ajmal, defeating Congress by a margin of about thirty-five thousand votes. But the bigger picture is that the Muslims who constitute nearly one-third of the State’s population and who formed one of the three ‘vote banks’ of the Congress are deserting the Congress and uniting under the leadership of the AIUDF.
The extent of Congress’ alienation from the Muslims came out in course of the live telecast of an interview of a cross section of Muslim voters of Jamunamukh. The anchorman reminded them that AIUDF president Baruddin Ajmal is an MP. He has made his brother Serajuddin Ajmal an MP, too, and now he has set up his youngest son Abdul as candidate at Jamunamkh. He then asked: is it not parivartantra (family rule)? About thirty people got up in protest and as their spokesman an old man said: ‘We have seen the family rule of the Nehru-Gandhis since Independence. Even now they are ruling the Congress party, if not the country. That does not amount to parivartantra. It is only when it comes to our party president that you raise that question. Why are you so prejudiced?’
Both Hindus and Muslims are now turning away from the Congress. This is the stark reality that stares the Congress in the face in Assam today. The Congress leadership is realizing it. Last Saturday, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi held a press conference where he frankly admitted that the party had become alienated from the people. He said the party would have to go back to its old slogan of Janaganar padulit janaganr sarkar (a people’s government at the people’s door). This was the slogan coined by the late Chief Minister Sarat Chandra Sinha way back in the 1970s.
But Gogoi’s method to reforge the party’s links with the people is very different from that of Sinha. Gogoi said he would send government officers very frequently to the villages to interact with the people, know their problems and try to redress them. So it is on the officials on whom the Chief Minister will depend to carry out a task that is essentially political and has to be done by party workers. Can the bureaucrats replace party workers? Sinha was fully aware of the difference between the party and the government and their respective roles.
To add to the Congress’ worries the BJP is making inroads into another traditional vote bank of the Congress – the tea garden labourers in upper Assam. The INTUC, the trade union front of the Congress, went to seed when the ‘check-off’ system was introduced by the garden management. It meant contribution of the workers to the INTUC-controlled ACMS would be deducted from their salaries and deposited in the union account. This system assured the INTUC leaders a comfortable living without the need to be in living contact with the workers. The BJP has benefited from the disconnect of the INTUC with the workers. (IPA Service)