Dhubri: Over a month after the Assam chief minister stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not want to win the Dhubri seat in western Assam and that he would never campaign there, Himanta Biswa Sarma campaigned in the Muslim-majority Lok Sabha constituency on Thursday and appealed to the people to vote for Asom Gana Parishad (AGP)’s candidate Zabed Islam.
AGP is an ally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in Assam. The BJP is contesting in 11 out of 14 seats in Assam, while its ally AGP is contesting in two seats – Barpeta and Dhubri.
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Dhubri will go to polls to decide the fate of these three candidates in the third phase of the ongoing general elections on May 7.
On Thursday, Sarma reached Dhubri and addressed three public meetings at Gauripur, Bilasipara and Golakganj, three of the 11 assembly seats under the Dhubri Lok Sabha constituency.
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“I see a wave of enthusiasm among people in favour of AGP and BJP in parts of Dhubri where we didn’t have any presence earlier. People have realised that Ajmal’s (the sitting MP) time in Dhubri is over, and they don’t need Rakibul (the Congress candidate),” Sarma said at the Golakganj rally.
13 candidates in the fray in the seat with over 2.6 million voters, but the contest is a triangular one among All India United Democratic Front’s (AIUDF) Badruddin Ajmal, Congress’s Rakibul Hussain, a MLA from Nagaon district and AGP’s Islam, a former MLA.
The Dhubri Lok Sabha seat has been an AIUDF bastion since the 2009 general elections when Ajmal was first elected as an MP. He has been re-elected from the seat three times since.
Sarma had last year claimed that the BJP does not want votes from ‘Miyas’ for the next 10 years till the community discards practices like child marriages, sends girls to schools and stays away from fundamentalism.
‘Miya’ is a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam who migrated from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). According to the 2011 census, 34.22% of the state’s population or 10.68 million comprises Muslims. Most are Bengali-speaking Muslims or ‘Miyas’.
“When elections come, I will request them (Miyas) not to vote for us. Vote for us if you follow family planning, stop child marriage and shed fundamentalism. To complete this it will take 10 years. We will seek their votes after 10 years,” Sarma had said in October last year.
Congress candidate Hussain hit out at Assam CM over his campaign in Dhubri saying that Sarma took this stance after the first phase of polling on April 19 when he realised that people from other communities did not vote for BJP.
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“Now he is campaigning in Dhubri to ensure Ajmal wins again as both, the BJP and AIUDF have a deal and support each other. But he can’t fool the voters, who know about his antics,” Hussain said.
AIUDF, which has a large support base among Bengali-speaking Muslims, stated that people from the community will not be influenced by Sarma’s change of stance as they are aware of the eviction drives targeting them and bulldozing of houses and madrasas by the present state government.
“The CM who used to boast that he doesn’t need Miya’s votes is now desperately seeking their votes. But try as he might, people from the minority community are ready to give the present government a befitting reply this time,” said AIUDF general secretary Siddique Ali Thakuria in a statement.
There were 10 assembly constituencies of three districts under Dhubri Lok Sabha seat before last year’s delimitation exercise, which saw massive redrawing of boundaries of the state’s 126 assembly and 14 parliamentary seats. The region now has 11 assembly seats with four new ones added, and three old ones removed, spread across five districts.
Delimitation has also increased the number of voters in Dhubri significantly. In 2019, the constituency had 18,58,566 voters. But it has now jumped to 26,43,403, a 42% increase in 5 years.
