Assam: Ahoms feel unplugged from the power grid

Even as the state BJP was busy finalising its road map for the 2026 assembly elections in Dibrugarh on 10 October, four-time MP and former Union minister and state president Rajen Gohain announced he was quitting the party.

As many as 17 other BJP leaders and workers, including Kartik Sen Sinha, former MLA from Barak Valley, left with him. While Gohain is yet to join any other party, several other leaders as well as hundreds of workers are reported to have joined the Congress.

Gohain’s resignation exposes the tensions between the old guard and the new, internal rifts and growing dissatisfaction within the state unit of the BJP. Increasingly visible (and vocal) is the unease and anxiety over the party’s handling of indigenous communities and their legitimate demands, regional sentiment and mounting allegations of Assamese interests being betrayed ever since Himanta Biswa Sarma was foisted on Assam as chief minister.

“The state BJP is run by leaders hired from other parties… what is the point of remaining in the party when it ignores grassroots workers and leaders?” Gohain told National Herald. While he did not name Himanta — who defected to the BJP from the Congress in 2015 and edged out Sarbananda Sonowal as chief minister in 2021 — he was open about his disaffection with the BJP.

“Nobody in Delhi talks to us. I tried to raise these issues (of getting ignored and isolated in the party’s decision-making process). There was no response from leaders like Amit Shah. It makes no difference to them,” said Gohain, adding that even he was denied an appointment with BJP’s senior leaders in Delhi.

Meanwhile, Himanta is again screaming infiltration. Describing the situation as ‘explosive’, he has declared that the next census report will show that Miya Muslims account for 38 per cent of the state’s population. “The situation would not have been so grim if we had worked seriously on this issue during the past 30 years,” he adds, conveniently absolving himself, but not his predecessor.

Gohain claims the BJP has no interest in stopping legitimate infiltration. What it is keen on is diluting the domination of ethnic communities. Assam’s real enemy is the BJP, he says bluntly. Gohain also accuses New Delhi of overstating the bogey of infiltration to mask gerrymandering Assam’s indigenous communities through delimitation.

The 2023 delimitation exercise scattered Nagaon’s indigenous Ahoms to adjoining Assembly segments. “It diluted Ahom domination over the constituency. They feel stabbed in the back,” says Gohain, who represented the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency. Ahoms feel unplugged from the state’s political power grid, and this, he adds, will adversely impact the BJP’s electoral fortunes in central and upper Assam.

The state, however, is not yet polarised between the Congress and the BJP. The recent Bodoland Territorial Council elections — where the BJP and its ally the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) were decimated by the Hagrama Mohilary’s Bodoland People’s Front — revealed there was room for parties championing regional or indigenous issues. This despite the failure of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) experiment in the past.

Gohain is of the opinion that national parties are not sensitive enough to regional or indigenous aspirations and leaders. Asked about his future course, he says, “I am talking to regional and indigenous groups but have not yet come to a decision.”

BJP spokespersons have predictably downplayed the impact of Gohain’s exit. They say he was adequately ‘rewarded’ by the party — with the Union minister of state post and a cabinet position — and insist his resignation will not have any significant electoral fallout, given that the BJP now holds all eight assembly seats within the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency.

While Himanta has been peddling New Delhi’s cliched narrative based on infiltration and religious polarisation, state BJP president Dilip Saikia — long marinated in RSS brine — has taken a more nuanced approach. According to Saikia, the party’s core focus is on inclusive development. “We will work for the people more visibly than we have done in the past,” he says, adding that organisational issues and demands for recognition as Scheduled Tribes will be attended to, hinting at reconciliation with tribal groups.

Saikia’s statement is an acknowledgement of the challenges BJP faces in the state: dissonance, splintered focus, internal bickering, the desertion of leaders, a statewide agitation by Assam’s indigenous communities demanding ST status and inclusion in the Sixth Schedule, and muscle-flexing by Bodo and other ethnic groups. Add to the list the charged situation in the wake of Zubeen Garg’s mysterious death, with the people of Assam uniting in their demand for credible closure, and you know it’s going to be a rough ride.

Sourabh Sen is a Kolkata-based independent writer and commentator on politics, human rights and foreign affairs. More of his writing may be read here