Deflecting anti-CAA ire – BJP’s biggest challenge ahead of 2021 Assam polls

Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam has sounded the poll bugle with top guns such as Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, senior minister and party strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma and state president Ranjit Kumar Das asking party workers to prepare for 2021 at an event in Sivasagar recently.

It appears to be the BJP’s pre-emptive move to reach out to the people ahead of the likely alliance between the Congress and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). Besides, the emergence of a bouquet of regional political outfits, including the influential All Assam Students’ Union (AASU)-backed Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP) and jailed activist Akhil Gogoi’s new party, seems to have put the saffron party on the election mode.

The BJP’s choice of the venue is significant because Sivasagar in upper Assam used to be the capital of the Ahom kings who ruled the state for 600 years, and defeated the mighty Mughals in the Battle of Saraighat in 1671. The party wanted to send across a message that like the Ahom rulers, it would fight the enemy – Bangladeshi infiltrators -- with the help of Assam’s indigenous people.

This is nothing but the BJP’s renewed attempt to win sympathy of the various ethnic groups which took to streets protesting against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) last December on the grounds that it violates the 1985 Assam Accord of detection and expulsion of illegal immigrants on the basis of March 24, 1971 cutoff date.

CAA grants Indian citizenship to “persecuted” religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who entered the country on or before December 31, 2014. However, the law is in conflict with not only the Accord but also the subsequent exercise to update the National Register of Citizens in Assam, aimed at weeding out illegal Bangladeshi settlers irrespective of their religion.

Needless to say, in Assam, CAA proved the biggest embarrassment to the BJP because the same party had promised to implement “the Assam Accord in its letter and spirit” in the run-up to the 2016 assembly polls.

The BJP knows it too well that unless it touches upon the vexed issue of illegal immigration, it cannot douse the post-CAA public anger directed against it. This assumes more importance for the party following the emergence of the new regional political outfits that had their origin in the anti-CAA protests.

Why Upper Assam?

Upper Assam, which is home to a number of ethnic communities such as Tai Ahom, Moran, Matak, Sonowal-Kachari among others, was the epicentre of the anti-CAA agitation that rocked the state last December. The protests hit the BJP where it hurt most – its support base. In the 2016 assembly polls, when the party registered a historic victory, it had bagged 15 out of  22 seats in the key upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Jorhat, Golaghat and Majuli.

The CAA turns out to be a major strategic blunder by the BJP, which has damaged the party’s “pro-Assamese” image it painstakingly built in the run-up to the 2016 polls. Along with its ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) that was born out of the anti-foreigner movement of the 1980s, the BJP was accused of betraying the people of the state.

The party has realised that the only way to face these challenges is to change the narrative, a task nobody can do better than ‘master strategist’ Himanta Biswa Sarma. “In 2021, the BJP will undoubtedly form government. The new regional parties are saying that they will go to the doorstep of each family in the state. BJP believes in winning the hearts of the people, rather than visiting their homes,” he said, addressing a conclave of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the party’s youth wing, in Sivasagar earlier this month.

Congress-AIUDF main target

Dressed like an Ahom noble, Sarma said at the same event, “We will have to build a wall against this aggression (of infiltrators) that has posed a threat to our civilisation…it’s (the 2021 polls) going to be a fight of two civilisations.”

A shrewd politician as he is, Sarma quickly turned the tables on the Congress and the AIUDF led by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal, the two parties whom he had called “protector of illegal Bangladeshis” in the past.

Taking a swipe at the proposed Congress-AIUDF alliance, he alleged the grand old party had surrendered before the latter because the BJP “is ahead in this fight”.

Fighting corruption

 The party, which came to power with a promise of establishing a clean and corruption-free government, has now found itself in a spot following the arrest of a BJP functionary in a case pertaining to the leak of a police recruitment exam paper last month. Party leaders had initially denied accused Diban Deka’s link to the BJP, but later suspended him from the party’s membership. A retired deputy inspector general of Assam police has also been arrested in this connection.

There are clear indications that the Opposition will make it a major election issue. The Congress has recently staged state-wide demonstrations demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonwal as well as a judicial probe into the irregularities.

Ironically, it was the BJP that had accused the previous Congress government led by Tarun Gogoi of corruption and misgovernance ahead of the 2016 polls. It is yet to be seen how the ruling party defends itself in the face of mounting attack from its rivals over the question paper leak issue.

Jayanta Kalita is a senior journalist and author based in Delhi. He writes on issues related to India’s Northeast. The views expressed are personal.