Guwahati, May 5 (IANS) The election results on May 4 marked a day of significant electoral surprises and decisive mandates — as three incumbent governments in Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala were voted out, while the one in Assam was re-elected with an absolute majority.
In Assam, the BJP recorded a hat-trick of electoral wins with a commanding performance, securing 82 seats on its own and collectively 102 in the 126-member Assembly. Its allies — Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) also held ground, adding to its total tally, while Congress was reduced to 19 seats and its ally Raijor Dal won another two seats.
The elections, seen by multiple political watchers and analysts as highly polarised and identity-based, saw Congress’ fortunes slide across the state and get reduced to a ‘pro-Muslim party’ — eventually contributing to its third consecutive loss in a state, which it ruled for decades.
As per official details, Congress has won only in regions with a dominant Muslim population and has only one Hindu MLA elected among its total 19 legislators.
Breaking down the poll trend, one finds the Congress party suffered complete decimation in districts dominated by the majority community. The aggressive and assertive campaign by CM Himanta Biswa Sarma about the cultural identity of the state and the threat from infiltrating ‘Miya Muslims’ (a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims with Bangladeshi origin) added to the BJP’s rhetoric on Hindutva.
This aggressive Hindutva politics exacerbated deep-seated resentment among the majority community voters in the state, due to historical and legacy reasons.
Another crucial factor was the Assam BJP’s unabashed social media campaign, which created and orchestrated a powerful campaign to project Congress as a “party of minorities”.
The well-oiled social media team ran highly targeted campaigns, using influencers and shadow handles, to portray and label Cong leader Gaurav Gogoi as “Paaijan or someone close to Pakistan”.
The state government’s “Special Investigation Team”, which unearthed links between Pakistani entities and Gaurav Gogoi’s wife, only added strength to this campaign.
It also dug out past instances to label other Congress leaders as well as commentators as “Miya Lovers” and didn’t shy away from deploying AI tools to show the latter’s minority appeasement.
It also pointed out multiple instances of the Congress party’s mega outreach to the Muslim community, to woo their support in the hope of en masse voting.
The Chief Minister, in a press conference, spoke about how more than 10,000 Bangladeshi Muslim Facebook accounts were used in the Congress party’s digital campaign, in the run-up to elections.
Besides Assam BJP’s social media push to label Congress as ‘Miya party’, the statement from the Chief Minister only emboldened its claim on the latter’s hobnobbing with minority voices, in particular, for cultivating them as a dedicated vote bank.
Many video clips, purportedly from Pakistan, praising Gaurav Gogoi were also circulated and shared on social media to reinforce this message. The impact was visible as several posts on Instagram and Facebook depicted the Congress leader as ‘Paaijan’. As these posts struck a chord, this also elicited a wave of reactions and comments, further strengthening the popular discourse that Congress has become a “party of the minorities”.
Today, Assam’s stunning results and the BJP’s biggest victory in the Northeastern state only go to reaffirm the fact that the former succeeded in hard-selling the narrative that it was the incumbent regime which could shield the state from Bangladeshi infiltrators, and in turn, any demographic shift.
–IANS
mr/dpb
