Who will be the next CM of Assam?
April 8, 2016
There is a saying – once bitten twice
shy. For the BJP, it’s a case of twice bitten in successive state elections.
The major blow was in Bihar where the party banked heavily on its mascot, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi. Even the Delhi elections were no different where its CM
face Kiran Bedi was a last-minute afterthought. Hence, understandably, the BJP
now tries to insulate Modi in West Bengal, where even its most ardent
supporters don’t give any chance of coming to power, and in Assam.
The reversal in Bihar has
considerably forced the BJP to change its poll strategy. Unlike Bihar, Modi is
not the face of the party in Assam, where the party does stand a chance but
faces a stiff challenge from three-time chief minister Tarun Gogoi of the
Congress. In the north-eastern state, it’s Gogoi’s achievements as the CM that
its rivals are keen to pit against the BJP as a shrewd tactic to make it a
centre-versus-state affair by targeting Modi’s “empty” promises.
What makes Assam stand apart is that
unlike all assembly elections post 2014 general elections, it is the first time
that the BJP has projected a CM face right from day one. It is a major policy
shift considering that the party takes pride in collective decisions by
involving its cadre. It failed to do so in Delhi by making Bedi its CM
candidate at the very last minute in Delhi election, but it only created sharp
divisions within its cadres and the party lost miserably in the national
capital.
Sarbananda
Sonowal – BJP’s CM Face
In Assam though, its CM face Sarbananda
Sonowal, who at present is Union Minister of State for Youth affairs and
sports, is at the centre of all election campaigns. The party’s campaign videos
sing paeans to him. Significantly, the 54-year-old former president of All
Assam Students’ Union, who represents Assam’s Lakhimpur constituency in the Lok
Sabha, has not graduated from the RSS and Jan Sangh school of thoughts but was
an import to the saffron brigade from the Asom Gana Parishad. In January 2011,
he had left the AGP following a difference with the AGP top leadership.
Incidentally, the AGP is a BJP ally in the state this election.
Sonowal was at the helm of affairs
of the BJP during the 2014 general elections. On 21 November 2015, the BJP had
also appointed him as the state party president.
Considered a firebrand leader,
Sonowal was also given the title of “Jatiya Nayak of Assam” by the AASU after
he became a household name in Assam by petitioning the apex court against the
controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 (IMDT Act)
which was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in July 2005. But can he
engineer the ouster of a formidable Gogoi who is banking on his efforts for the
“upliftment of women” and “restoring peace” in the troubled state?
Can
Sonowal Surpass Gogoi?
Political commentators say the
octogenarian is contesting perhaps the toughest electoral battle of his career
and Gogoi himself apprehends a division of “secular” votes in the absence of
any pre-election understanding with “secular” Left parties. (While the Congress
has a pre-poll alliance with United People’s Party (UPP) for four
constituencies in Bodoland Territorial Area Districts, six Left parties –
Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, CPI(Marxist-
Leninist)-Liberation, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Revolutionary Communist
Party of India and All India Forward Block are fighting together in 59 seats in
the state.
Is
AIUDF’s Badruddin Ajmal a Threat to Gogoi’s Prospects
What would be crucial for Gogoi
would be the stand of the All India United Democratic Front – which has
perceptibly considerable hold over the migrant Muslims in the state. As of now,
as mentioned in these columns earlier, the ruling Congress has maintained a
distance from the AIUDF as it is wary of annoying indigenous voters. While
Gogoi has, thus far, ruled out any post election tie-up with the AIUDF, the
AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal did hint at the possibility of a post-election
alliance with the Congress in the State in case of a hung assembly. In 2011
assembly elections, the AIUDF, with 18 seats, was the second largest party in
the state assembly and hence, its rising influence cannot be ignored in 2016
either.
It
is Gogoi versus Sonowal in Assam
In the final analysis, Assam seems
the only among the five poll-bound states where the BJP senses an outside
chance of forming a government this summer. In Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, it
can only hope to play a second (or third) fiddle to the dominant local allies.
In Kerala, it is still struggling to gain a foothold, while in West Bengal –
where its vote share had temporarily surged during the 2014 Lok Sabha
elections, a galaxy of star campaigners including party president Amit Shah, PM
Modi and several Union Ministers including Sushma Swaraj and Suresh Prabhu have
already campaigned there.
However, the idea is more to go for,
as newspaper reports suggested, “political seeding” with an eye on 2019 general
elections. It has not projected any CM face there, though it banks considerably
on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s grand nephew Chandra Kumar Bose – a late
inclusion in the party. He is a candidate pitted against Trinamool Congress
supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to stage an upset. But it is in
Assam, where the saffron brigade desperately hopes to salvage its prestige. But
can Sonowal deliver the goods? For once, it is a rare occasion in recent times
that election is being contested in the name of two local rivals, making it a
Gogoi versus Sonowal clash in Assam!
- See more at:
http://www.elections.in/blog/who-will-be-the-next-cm-of-assam/#sthash.IL3j6So6.dpuf
Comments
Post a Comment