Opinion | Unmet promises could be ruling BJP’s Achilles’ heel in Assam

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already been to Assam four times this year and more visits are expected as elections draw close.

In the run-up to the 2016 Assam assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) outlined its “vision” for the northeastern state, touching upon certain core issues that had remained on paper for decades. And when the party stormed to power demolishing 15 years of the Congress rule, there was a perception that things would soon change for the better.

A check shows that the BJP-led coalition government has not only failed to fulfill many of these promises but its overall performance seems to be far from satisfactory. Worse, the BJP big guns have picked the same issues in this year’s poll campaign as well.

Two recent opinion polls show that the saffron party is likely to face a significant challenge from the Congress-led “grand alliance”.

According to the most recent survey by Times Now and C-Voter, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could get 67 seats, barely three more than the majority mark of 64 in the 126-seat assembly the voting for which will be held over three phases beginning March 27. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is projected to get 57. In 2016, the NDA had bagged 74 and the UPA 39 seats.

The BJP seems to be aware that it has goofed up on several key issues, including the National Register of Assam (NRC), Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, flood and erosion control, ST status to six communities, that figured in its 2016 its manifesto.

The party is now trying its cover its tracks as top BJP leaders have focused their campaign solely on attacking the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), which is part of the “grand alliance”. The AIUDF, led by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal, is seen as a party sympathetic to suspected illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

That this election will not be a cakewalk for the BJP seems to have dawned on the party brass, something which is reflected in the number of visits Prime Minister Narendra Modi has undertaken in the state since the beginning of this year.

Sample this: since January, Modi has visited Assam four times—on January 23, February 7, February 22 and March 18, according to the information posted on the PMO website. And if media reports are to be believed, he will visit the state at least seven more times in the coming weeks.

In contrast, he had toured Assam only four times in the run-up to the 2016 polls – on January 19, February 5, March 26 and April 8.

The 2016 poll result was a foregone conclusion. A strong BJP, basking in the glory of the 2014 Modi wave, was pitted against a weak Congress. The BJP also presented an exhaustive to-do list to strike a chord with the voters.

A glance at some of the key promises made by the BJP and what it has delivered:

Clause 6 of the Assam accord & NRC

The BJP’s ‘Assam Vision Document 2016-2025’ said the 1985 Assam Accord, the signing of which marked the end of the six-year anti-foreigner agitation, would be implemented “in its letter and spirit”. It also attached priority to updating the NRC process to weed out illegal immigrants.

Clause 6 of the accord says, “Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards…shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people”.

The fate of Clause 6  hangs in balance as the state and Centre—both ruled by the BJP—are not on the same page. Assam’s finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma last month said the recommendations of the Centre’s high-powered committee were legally invalid.

Also, the updated NRC, a purely Assam-specific exercise carried out under the Supreme Court’s supervision, upset the indigenous organisations and the civil society of Assam, as it excluded 1.9 million people, a large section of which are believed to be genuine citizens including the tribal population.

To make matter worse, the Assam NRC coordinator has admitted in an affidavit submitted to the Gauhati High Court that the Registrar General of India kept the NRC anomalies under wraps, a serious allegation that could create a huge legal issue. Even the ruling party is silent on the glitch-ridden NRC exercise in Assam, with the issue being put on the back burner.

Flood & erosion control

Successive governments have either neglected or failed to come up with a long-term solution to the recurring problem of flood and the erosion caused by the Brahmaputra river and its tributaries.

The BJP poll manifesto listed a slew of measures to tackle the annual problem, including identifying Majuli, the world’s largest inhabited river island, as a high priority zone under a special programme to prevent further soil erosion, dredging the entire stretch of the Brahmaputra riverbed in the state, introducing a state-sponsored insurance and rehabilitation scheme for flood and erosion victims, among others.

Most of these schemes are still on paper with the only exception being Majuli, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal’s constituency, where he laid the foundation stone for a multi-purpose flood shelter home to be built with a budget of Rs 2.51 crore in November 2020.

The dredging of the riverbed to increase the water retention capacity of the river is moving at a snail’s pace. There were reports of the government procuring a dredger from the US, which was to arrive this year, but no further details are available as of now.

ST status to six communities

Days before his party’s landslide victory in the 2014 general elections, Modi had in a poll rally promised to fulfil the long-pending demand for granting scheduled tribe (ST) status to six communities. He slammed the then UPA government at the Centre for doing nothing for them during its 10 years in power. The BJP accorded high priority to the issue in its 2016 manifesto.

Categorised as Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the six communities —Koch-Rajbongshi, Tai Ahom, Moran, Matak, Chutia and tea tribes —have accused successive governments of betraying them. All that the BJP has done in the past five years is to create autonomous councils for three of these groups, leaving the main issue of ST status unresolved.

Recently, Union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda told the Lok Sabha that a committee had submitted its report but declined to give a timeline when the six communities would be accorded the tribal status.

 (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.)