Assam’s Lok Sabha bypoll could define contours of Opposition politics in the State

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The Assam Congress, led by MP Gaurav Gogoi, has broken ties recently with the Raijor Dal of Akhil Gogoi. | Photo Credit: file photo

The line-up for the Nagaon parliamentary seat byelection on October 6 is complete with the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) nominating 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 academic Abdul Salam of Trinamool Congress also in the fray.

Nagaon is the first major face-off between the principal combatants, BJP and Congress, since the former’s crushing sweep in the April Assembly election with 102 out of 126 seats for the National Democratic Alliance. The AIUDF’s last-minute candidate switch from former student leader Rejaul Karim Sarkar to its founder is a bold gambit that could radically alter Opposition politics in a foreseeable future where the ruling party holds near-absolute sway.

Even as the upper regions of Assam were still reeling from the impact of sudden floods in July, the State’s broader Opposition unity fractured on September 3 when the Congress formally severed ties with Akhil Gogoi’s Raijor Dal. Wazid Ali Choudhury, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, said the decision by the Congress leadership followed repeated criticism of the party by its ally. “Akhil Gogoi has constantly been criticising the Congress party and its leaders. We got tired of the fact that he was in an alliance with us and still criticising us,” he said. The erstwhile junior ally chose to train its guns on Lok Sabha MP and Assam Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi, questioning the scale of his engagement with the flood crisis.

While he opted not to put up a candidate in Nagaon in the interest of “preventing the rise of communal forces”, the Raijor Dal chief is eyeing a larger chunk of the Opposition space over the full term of the BJP-led government. The party won two seats in the April election, 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 the Congress’s veto forced Raijor Dal to drop Sherman Ali Ahmed as its candidate from Mandia; Mr. Ahmed promptly walked over to the Trinamool Congress and secured the party its sole seat.

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

The Muslim vote isn’t a settled question either. The Congress wrested back much of this electoral constituency from the AIUDF in the last Assembly election after refusing to renew its tie-up from 2021, but dismal performances across seats with a thin minority concentration leave it vulnerable to another shift. Mr.