Can Congress avoid its worst Assam defeat yet?

Bhupen Borah's likely February 22, 2026, switch to the BJP happens at a time when the 2021 opposition alliance breaks apart, leaving Congress with just 29 seats to defend.

When Bhupen Borah, the former Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president, joins the BJP on February 22, 2026, it caps a fast-moving unravelling. The opposition alliance that won 50 seats in 2021 is no longer intact, and Congress is heading into 2026 with its smallest, weakest seat base in decades.

Congress once ran Assam for long stretches. Now the numbers show a party losing seats, allies and organisation at the same time. If even a modest swing hits its narrow 2021 wins, Congress could fall below its 2016 low. For the BJP-led NDA, the rival’s fragmentation could turn a stable majority into a larger one.

In numbers

In depth

Assam’s seat map has moved faster than its vote totals. In 2011, Congress won 78 seats with 39.4% of the vote. By 2016, it fell to 26 seats even while taking 31% of the vote. Over the same period, the BJP rose to 60 seats in 2016 on a 29.5% vote share, a sharp shift driven by strong vote-to-seat conversion.

In 2021, Congress improved slightly to 29 seats with 29.7% vote share, while the BJP stayed at 60 seats with 33.2% vote share. Over the decade from 2011 to 2021, Congress lost 49 seats as the BJP gained 55.