Exit Polls Predict Complete Marginalisation Of Assamese Regional Parties

The results of the exit polls for Assam announced Thursday evening held no surprises.

A win for the BJP, though not by the huge margin as the saffron party had predicted, was widely expected and predicted.

BJP leaders had been confidently predicting a ‘100+’ tally for the party, but Swarajya had, as the results of all exit polls now show, discounted that forecast in early March.

However, it is the complete decimation of the Assamese regional parties whose primary plank is Assamese sub-nationalism that is the primary takeaway from the exit polls.

The tally of BJP ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which won 14 seats in 2016, is expected to be between four and seven.

The AGP will thus be reduced to a very pale shadow of its former self. Formed in 1985 after the Assam Accord, the AGP was birthed by the protracted Assam agitation against the presence of and continuing illegal influx of Bangladeshis into Assam.

The AGP formed the government in the state twice: from 1985 to 1989 and again from 1996 to 2001. It was part of the successive Union governments led by V.P.Singh, I.K. Gujaral and H.D.Deve Gowda.

The predicted poor performance of the AGP in this (2021) elections will surely sound the death knell for this once-powerful Assamese regional party.

The AGP was formed by leaders of the powerful All Assam Students' Union (AASU) which spearheaded the Assam agitation.

But 35 years later, disillusioned with the AGP, the AASU floated another political front--the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP)--led by its former general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi in September last year.

The formal and final break between the AGP and AASU came after the former failed to heed repeated calls by the latter to snap ties with the BJP and leave the Sarbananda Sonowal-led government it was part of in the wake of the BJP enacting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The enactment of the CAA in December 2019 triggered widespread protests in Assam that led to the loss of a few lives, huge damage to public properties and disruption of life across the state (except in the Bengali-dominated Barak Valley where CAA found robust support).

The Assamese felt that the CAA, which promised citizenship to Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other religious groups (except Muslims) who have fled persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, would open the floodgates for entry of Bengali-speaking Hindus from Bangladesh into Assam.

That, fear the Assamese, would lead to further demographic imbalance in Assam.

The anti-CAA stir also spawned two more parties--the Raijor Dal (RD; people’s party) led by controversial activist Akhil Gogoi and Anchalik Gana Morcha (AGM) led by former Rajya Sabha MP Ajit Kumar Bhuyan.

All these three Assamese parties--AJP, RD and AGM--have a common agenda: to protect and preserve the rights, interests and culture of the Assamese.

While the AJP and RD contested the polls independently, the AGM joined the Congress-led ‘grand alliance’ that also had Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF as a constituent.

The presence of the AIUDF in an electoral alliance with the AGM (with its jatiyatabadi or Assamese sub-nationalism plank) sealed the AGM’s electoral prospects since the AIUDF is viewed as a Islamist party that was formed to protect the interests of Bangladeshi-origin Muslims in Assam.

The alliance between the Congress and the AIUDF would have also hurt the former’s electoral prospects, especially among Assamese Hindus and other indigenous communities of Assam (read this). But that’s a different story.

The AASU-sponsored AJP and the Raijor Dal are expected to have fared poorly and are most likely to even draw a blank because the elections in Assam have been highly polarised.

With the BJP carrying out a high-voltage campaign against Bangladesh-origin Muslims and the dangers posed by their large-scale presence in Assam, and the Congress accusing the BJP of endangering the existence of the Assamese and other indigenous communities of the state by enacting the CAA, there was little space for these small parties to script a narrative in their own favour.

The BJP’s high-pitched campaign against Bangladesh-origin Muslims led to consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of the Congress & AIUDF-led ‘grand alliance’.

The Assamese Hindus and other indigenous communities who did not want to vote for the BJP or its allies felt that voting for the Congress would be better than voting for the RD or AJP since these two newly-formed parties did not stand any chance of standing up to the BJP.

The anti-BJP vote, thus, went to the Congress since Assamese Hindus and other indigenous communities who did not support the BJP did not want to waste their votes on the two political lightweights (RD and AJP).

The AGM, part of the grand alliance, contested from only one seat (Bokakhat) from which veteran AGP leader Atul Bora also contested. Pollsters say that the AGM’s lightweight candidate, Pranab Doley, stood little chance against Bora.

The bipolar Assam elections this time, thus, is likely to show a complete decimation of regional parties which have Assamese jatiyatabadi as their primary political plank.

Interestingly, the Bodoland People's Front (BPF), which was an ally of the BJP but joined the grand alliance after being eased out of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), is the only regional party which is expected to pick up a respectable number of seats.

Representing primarily the Bodos, the BPF contested 12 seats and is expected to bag six to eight of them.

And the AIUDF, representing Bangladesh-origin Muslims, will also bag a substantial chunk of the 14 seats it contested from.

Sunday (the day the election results will be announced) is thus expected to be a disappointing day for the advocates of Assamese jatiyatabadi.