Congress takes its perception problem head-on in Assam

In picking the Lok Sabha candidate for Dhubri in Assam, the Congress makes its boldest declaration yet to the voters that the party has no truck with Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF

The Congress has struggled with an acute perception problem in Assam after ceding power to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2016 and desperately tying up with the State’s third key player, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) of Badruddin Ajmal, in the run-up to the next Assembly election in 2021.

While the grand old party severed ties with the AIUDF soon after the 2021 Assembly election with the tie-up not yielding the winning numbers, the naming of Rakibul Hussain as the party candidate against Mr. Ajmal in Dhubri is its boldest declaration yet that it has no truck whatsoever with the primarily immigrant Muslim-backed party.

The party has been constantly taunted by its former senior leader and first-time Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of having relegated itself to a refuge of ‘Bangladeshis’, mostly a misnomer for Bengali-origin immigrants dating back to colonial times. The barbs have pushed the Congress on the back foot in the State in recent years because the perception has some currency among sections of the Assamese electorate, especially the caste Hindus.

A lightweight candidate would have again fuelled allegations by the ruling alliance of a tacit understanding between the principal Opposition parties. After all, Mr. Ajmal, seeking re-election from the Dhubri seat for the fourth consecutive term, has consistently secured more than 40% of the total votes polled in the constituency since 2009. Mr. Hussain is no also-ran. Currently the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, he is a five-term MLA since 2001 and had served as Minister in multiple Tarun Gogoi-led Congress governments in the State.

While it’s true that the Congress’s 2021 Mahajot alliance ran the Mitrajot combine of BJP, Asom Gana Parishad and United People’s Party Liberal close in terms of vote share, securing around 43.5% compared to their opponents’ 44.4%, the NDA sweep in Upper Assam was a disconcerting sign of the ethnic Assamese, associated communities such as the Morans, Misings, Rabhas and Deoris, and the tea tribes moving away.

The loss coincided with Muslim candidates making up 16 of the Congress’s 29 entrants to the Assembly; with the AIUDF winning 15 seats, the overall tally of 31 Muslim MLAs was the second highest since 1983. In sum, the Congress-AIUDF victories were restricted to parts of the Barak Valley in southern Assam, a cluster of seats in central Assam and the bulk of Lower Assam constituencies barring the autonomous Bodo areas and constituencies around Guwahati.