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Why did the BJP win in Assam?



Why did the BJP win in Assam?
By Deepak Parvatiyar
May 19, 2016
- See more at: http://www.elections.in/blog/why-did-the-bjp-win-in-assam/#sthash.Ot0m8BUA.dpuf

The poll outcome in Assam has been a giant leap for the Bharatiya Janata Party in a state where in the last assembly elections in 2011 it won just 5 of the 126 seats!

The poll outcome though was along the predicted lines of the exit polls this time.  This was one election where the BJP had sensed an outside chance of creating history by annexing power for the first ever time in North East. This was based on a couple of factors –
a)  The anti-incumbency wave against the 15 year old Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government
b)  The sensitive Muslim migrant issue which had earlier fetched the BJP rich dividends in 2014 general elections when it had bagged seven of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Unlike in Bihar and Delhi where the BJP’s hopes of forming a government were dashed, the party learnt its lesson fast and projected a young CM face in Sabananda Sonowal from day one in Assam.  The 54-year-old Sonowal, a union minister of state till then, had been groomed enough and was at the helm of affairs of the BJP during the 2014 general elections.

The BJP deftly played the migrant card

Sensing an anti-incumbency wave against the ruling Congress, the saffron brigade was careful not to deviate from its core issue of Hindutva.  To appease the Hindu voters and consolidate their votes in a state which has the second highest Muslim population in the country (34 per cent), it deftly played the long standing Bangladeshi migrant card in face of a surging challenge from Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front – which had perceptible hold over the migrant Muslims in the state and had won an impressive 18 seats to emerge as the second largest party in the state assembly in 2011.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself vowed to disenfranchise millions of Muslim immigrants in the state, his party promised to identify and deport younger illegal migrants. The party launched a scathing attack on incumbent chief minister Tarun Gogoi for resorting to vote bank politics by allowing unchecked immigration from Bangladesh. The BJP promised “complete sealing of the India-Bangladesh border” in the state.

Sonowal’s image came handy

What was handy was also Sonowal’s own image of the “Jatiya Nayak of Assam” after he had petitioned the Supreme 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.
Obviously, the larger strategy was to paint both the Congress as well as AIUDF as parties which were are not interested in solving this problem of illegal immigrants because of their “vote-bank politics”, and the BJP apparently succeeded in its strategy. The BJP’s tough stand on the vexed problem of illegal migrants did put the Congress in the dock during the election. The fear of annoying indigenous voters forced the party maintain a distance from AIUDF which was seen to have considerable hold over the migrant Muslims in the state.  Blame it on the BJP’s offensive, the Congress was even wary of announcing any possibility of a post-poll alliance with the AIUDF in case of a hung assembly. Besides, unlike in West Bengal, the Congress failed to enter into any understanding and thus its worst fears of a division of “secular” votes in the absence of any pre-election understanding with the “secular” Left parties, too proved true. Consequently in the end, the BJP did benefit from the Congress’s Catch-22 position.
As for incumbent CM Tarun Gogoi, his strategy to bank on his efforts of the “upliftment of women” and “restoring peace” in the troubled state, proved too measly a poll plank to catapult him to the throne for the fourth term. What also did not do any good was yet another clever ploy of the BJP – engineering defections in the Congress as part of its “agenda” of breaking the state Congress before the elections!
- See more at: http://www.elections.in/blog/why-did-the-bjp-win-in-assam/#sthash.Ot0m8BUA.dpuf


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