lok-sabha-elections

Updated: May 25, 2019 14:15 IST

As the Modi wave swept away Congress in most states, the party in Assam not only managed to save face by retaining its tally of three Lok Sabha seats but also bettered its vote share by over five percentage points.

In other Northeastern states, Congress has been wiped out except in Meghalaya where it won the Shillong constituency. Congress leaders in Assam concede that it is a result of the party performing well in pockets where minority voters were in large numbers and a little help from Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) which fielded candidates in just three constituencies.

The Congress candidates won in Nowgong where Pradyut Bordoloi trounced BJP’s Rupak Sarmah, a local MLA who was fielded after veteran leader and union minister Rajen Gohain was denied a ticket. In Kaliabor, a Congress bastion, Gaurav Gogoi, the sitting MP defeated the AGP candidate. In minority community dominated Barpeta, Congress’ Abdul Khaleque Ahmed won pushing AGP to the second spot and AIUDF to the third.

“We performed well in constituencies where the minority voters have a significant presence,” said Debabrata Saikia, Congress Legislative Party leader in the Assembly explaining Congress show in Assam even as he conceded that the party’s election issues like price rise, unemployment and citizenship were overtaken by BJP’s impetus on national security in other parts of the state.

Congress polled 29.9% votes in 2014 when it won 3 seats and 30.96% votes in the 2016 Assembly elections it lost to the BJP alliance. In 2019, the vote share has gone up to 35.44%.

Also read: Lok Sabha elections 2019: Lotus blooms in Northeast

However, this surge may be a result of the AIUDF deciding to restrict itself to just three seats which it won in 2014. The AIUDF had 14.98% votes in 2014 when it fielded 10 candidates and 13.5% votes in the 2016 Assembly elections.

In the recently concluded elections, it polled 7.8% votes with Ajmal being the sole winner from Dhubri, an overwhelmingly Muslim majority constituency in lower Assam. The party’s support base comprises mostly of Bengali speaking Muslims.

“We have a lot of hard work to do to prepare for 2021 Assembly polls. I am not sure what would have been the outcome in Kalibor and Nowgong if the AIUDF had put up its candidate,” Saikia said detailing how the AIUDF not fielding candidates helped the Congress. The AIUDF candidate had polled over 2,31,000 votes in Kaliabor and over 3,14,000 votes in Nowgong in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

After being snubbed by the Congress over the question of an alliance, when Ajmal declared that he has decided that the AIUDF will contest from just three seats to save the division of the secular vote, the Congress had said the decision had to do much more with AIUDF’s tumbling fortunes which the party hoped to capitalise on.

It may have indeed happened in Barpeta, a Muslim majority constituency where Congress trounced AIUDF to third spot. In most other constituencies, Saikia said as the minority voters who would not like to vote for BJP were left with no alternative, they voted for the Congress.

But Ajmal claims an alliance would have helped both the parties. “This result is a collective failure of the leadership of the Congress. Had they accepted our offer of an alliance we would have won 9-10 seats together,” he claimed.

Tarun Gogoi, the former chief minister and senior leader of the Congress who has been vocal against such a move conceded that an alliance may have helped in some constituencies.

“In places like Karimganj where the BJP won because the Muslim vote got split between the Congress and the AIUDF, we could have won if there was an alliance. But 9-10 seats is an exaggeration,” he said. The local unit of the Congress had been resisting the alliance for two reasons, that it may dent its support within other groups who consider AIUDF representing interests of migrant Muslims and two, it expected a lot of minority voters of the AIUDF to switch to the Congress.

Even while the AIUDF-Congress alliance never materialised, the BJP in its election campaign made sure that the message that there was indeed a backdoor understanding between both the parties seems to have percolated down to the voters.

“We lost in constituencies like Nowgong because of AIUDF not fielding candidate. But our message that the Congress and the AIUDF are mixed up bore results,” said Ranjit Kumar Dass, president of BJP’s state unit in Assam. “The anti-Congress, anti-AIUDF voters came out in large numbers to vote. This is what led to the increase in turnout and helped the BJP,” he said.