Assam’s Lok Sabha poll could define the contours of opposition politics in the state

Assam Congress, led by MP Gaurav Gogoi, recently severed ties with Raijor Dal Akhil Gogoi. | Photo credit: file photo

The lineup for the October 6 Nagaon parliamentary seat is complete, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) will nominate its chief Badruddin Ajmal as its candidate on Tuesday. His entry makes it a four-way contest with former legislator Sibamoni Bora of the Congress, former bureaucrat Devasish Sharma of the BJP and academician Abdul Salam of the Trinamool Congress.

Nagaon is the first major clash between the main battlers, the BJP and the Congress, since the former’s landslide in the April elections to the assembly with 102 of the 126 seats for the National Democratic Alliance. The last-minute change of AUIDF candidate from former student leader Rejaul Karim Sarkar to its founder is a bold move that could radically change opposition politics in the foreseeable future, where the ruling party has near-absolute power.

Even as upper Assam was still reeling from the impact of July’s flash floods, the state’s wider opposition unity was shattered on 3 September when the Congress formally severed ties with Akhila Gogoi’s Raijor Dal. Wazid Ali Choudhury, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, said the Congress leadership’s decision followed repeated criticism of the party by its ally. “Akhil Gogoi is constantly criticizing the Congress party and its leaders. We are tired of him being in alliance with us and still criticizing us,” he said. The erstwhile junior ally decided to train his guns on Lok Sabha MP and Assam Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi, questioning the extent of his involvement in the flood crisis.

While he has decided not to field a candidate in Nagaon in the interest of “preventing the rise of communal forces”, the Raijor Dal chief is eyeing a bigger chunk of opposition space for the entire tenure of the BJP-led government. The party won two seats in the April elections, with Mr. Akhil Gogoi defending his Sibsagar seat from 2021 and Mehboob Muktar winning Dhing LAC in Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency.

It could have added a third to its kitty, but a Congress veto forced Raijor Dal to drop Sherman Ali Ahmed as his candidate from Mandia; Mr. Ahmed immediately switched to the Trinamool Congress and secured the party its only seat.

Raijor Dal’s Long Game

With only one non-Muslim among the 19 winning Congress candidates, the Raijor Dal’s long game is clear: to expand among Assamese Hindu voters at the expense of the main opposition party, a prospect that even Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma predicted this February.

The Muslim vote is also not a settled issue. The Congress wrested much of this constituency from the AUIDF in the last Assembly elections after it refused to renew its 2021 alliance, but dismal performances across seats with little minority concentration leave it vulnerable to further slippage. Mr. Ajmal had put the cat among the pigeons as early as August 16 when he had asserted—correctly in retrospect—that the Congress would not field a Muslim candidate on the by-poll. With the AIUDF chief, currently MLA from central Assam’s Binnakandi and former three-time MP from western Assam’s Dhubri, seeking to win back the party’s core constituency by fielding a candidate. The arithmetic adds up: Nagaon has four Muslim-majority assembly segments, Dhing, Rupahihat, Lahorighat and Samaguri, and four others – Nagaon-Batadraba, Jagiroad, Morigaon and Raha; over 55% of the voters of the parliamentary constituency are minorities.

The BJP and the AUIDF with their respective picks from Nagaon took the Congress from both sides. State BJP chief Dilip Saikia and the CM acknowledged the chances of an “unconventional” seat. The BJP is banking on a non-Muslim consolidation for Mr. Devasish Sharma, the former deputy commissioner of Nagaon, whose transition from a bureaucrat on September 3 to a BJP politician five days later sparked outrage in the Congress. The strategy, the CM said, is to maximize its advantage in the four non-minority-burdened segments and reduce deficits in the rest.

The candidatures of Mr. Ajmal and Mr. Salam ensure that every Muslim vote will be fought for equally. A victory in Congress could only happen if he manages to garner support across sections of the electorate — basically how his old winning formula works. The party could not afford to alienate non-minority voters with the Muslim vote as it had won the Lok Sabha seat twice in a row even as it slipped up against the BJP elsewhere. Thus Congress will lose the Nagaon poll.

“Congress will again secure victory in Nagaon bypoll. Take it as an announcement,” Mr Gaurav Gogoi said even before the party announced its choice.

Indeed, a victory would signal a major shift: a diverse electorate, bridging religious divides, electing a Congress candidate first for the post and giving the party a credible chance to take on the BJP after five years. A failure would mean that the basic factor behind his Assembly electoral progress – the inability to appeal to the Assamese Hindu electorate beyond a certain threshold – persists.

Published – 17 Sep 2026 01:11 IST