CONGRESS RESTORING ITS MUSLIM BASE AGAIN
By Barun Das Gupta
Until recently, the BJP was eyeing Assam as the only winnable among the five States that are going to the polls this summer. But the situation has changed in the last few weeks. Its exercise at striking
an alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad has resulted in a vertical split in the regional party. Sunil Rajkonwar, the leader of the break-away faction which calls itself the AGP (Anchalik) has announced
that the new party will contest 45 of the 126 Assembly seats.
The Assamese-speaking people of the Brahmaputra Valley have a strong pride in their distinct identity as Assamese. They have an intrinsic apathy to the national parties. Regionalism has a strong appeal.
During the anti-foreigner agitation in Assam from 1979 to 1985, the leaders of the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (which later morphed into the full-fledged political party called AGP) used to claim
proudly that they had ‘rendered irrelevant’ all the national mainstream parties in Assam.
The grass-root level workers of the AGP were against any tie up with the BJP. They had been putting pressure on the party leadership not to enter into an electoral alliance with the BJP. But the leaders thought
otherwise. They were firm in their resolve to become a junior partner of a BJP-led alliance. The result was the split. The new party may not be able to achieve significant electoral victories but it will act as
a spoilsport for the parent party in many constituencies to the obvious advantage of the Congress. Incidentally, it is the fourth split suffered by the AGP since its inception.
BJP’s alliance with another regional party, the Bodoland People’s Front, which rules the Bodoland Territorial Council, has led to the Congress formally entering into an electoral alliance with the rival
United People’s Party in the Bodo areas. As numerically the non-Bodos outnumber the Bodos in the Bodoland Territorial Council area, the UPP will give the BPF a run for its money.
BJP’s aggressively polarizing politics is now recoiling on itself. The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) has a strong following amongthe Bengali-speaking Muslims of the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys.
This enabled the party to win as many as eighteen seats in the last State Assembly polls in 2011. But the minority community seems to be weighing its options between the AIUDF and the Congress in the larger
national political context. They know that it is only the Congress which can effectively challenge the BJP in 2019. A regional party cannot. The AIUDF is yet to release its full list of candidates.
Meanwhile, to add to the worries of the AIUDF supremo Badruddin Ajmal’s worries, there is a strong undercurrent of rumour that he is secretly trying to strike a deal with the BJP. It is still too early
to anticipate the likely impact of this rumour on Muslim voters but in view of the known eagerness of the AIUDF to share power in Assam anyhow, nothing can be ruled out at this stage.
However, in the ensuing assembly elections, sizable sections of the minority community may prefer the Congress to AIUDF. Signs of this are visible. Last week two AIUDF legislators joined the Congress – one
from the Brahmaputra Valley and the other from the Barak Valley. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi exudes confidence that more desertions will take place from the BJP, AGP and the AIUDF in the coming days. His is not an empty boast. Two BJP leaders, Sankar Prasad Roy (a former president of AASU) and Sabda Ram Rabha, a senior lawyer and member of the Rabha community, have joined the Congress, accusing the BJP of going back on the promises made to them on being given party nomination.
When former Congress minister Himanta Biswa Sarma joined the BJP with his flock of nine Congress legislators late last year, there was widespread apprehension among BJP workers that in a case of a BJP
victory he would bid for chief ministership. As a pre-emptive step, the central leadership of the party hastily announced the name of Sarbananda Sonowal, the Union Sports Minister, as the party’s chief
ministerial candidate to pacify the agitated workers.
A dark horse in the coming elections will be the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) of Akhil Gogoi. It is not a political party but has a wide support base in both rural and urban areas. After the recent
trouble in the JNU and the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, the KMSS organized a massive protest rally at Guwahati against the BJP and its allegedly communal politics. Gogoi is both anti-Congress and anti-BJP
but he thinks the BJP is a bigger danger as it wants to destroy the democratic and secular fabric of India and usher in what he calls a ‘fascist rule’ in the country. He has not stated which party the KMSS
members will support but he has made his intention of launching a political party after the polls quite clear. (IPA Service)