In the tea city of Chabua in Upper Assam’s Dibrugarh, the scars of the 2019 violence are nonetheless seen. In the guts of the city, a vandalised put up workplace has anti-CAA graffiti scribbled throughout it. Less than a kilometre away, in what used to be the circle workplace, official paperwork and shards are strewn all throughout the deserted constructing.
The city was one of many epicentres of a wave of violence that struck Assam in December 2019, as Parliament handed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA — an emotive difficulty within the state that shares its borders with Bangladesh and the place identification politics dominates the controversy.
Chabua noticed pitched battles between safety forces and native activists, who imagine CAA would lead to a change within the socio-cultural material of Assam by permitting an inflow of Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh. CAA fast-tracks citizenship of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis who’ve arrived in India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh earlier than 2015.
THRILLER IN THE MAKING
The city, which has already voted within the first of the three phases of the Assam elections, appears to have come a great distance since these violent days. A host of latest points, resembling value rise, floods and growth, have taken the centre stage in Chabua, the place locals count on an in depth electoral contest.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition has allotted Chabua to the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), one among its allies. Sitting BJP legislator Binod Hazarika, whose home was attacked in the course of the violence, has shifted to the neighbouring Lahowal seat.
“It is going to be difficult for the BJP alliance to retain this seat. A lot of voters may not be willing to vote for the elephant (election symbol of the AGP),” says an area activist of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), requesting anonymity. The AASU is opposing the ruling aspect and has spearheaded anti-CAA protests within the space. “The BJP has given out doles to shut the people,” one other activist says.
At the luxurious Chubwa Tea Estate within the city, the place the British first efficiently planted tea in 1836, native staff say the difficulty of the citizenship regulation is now not related. Congress chief and Wayanad parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi visited the tea property on March 19 and had lunch with staff there.
“There is no mention of CAA anymore,” says Sarai Kumar, a staff’ union chief. “We have seen all governments. The Congress in the past and the BJP now. It is the BJP whose work is visible,” he says.
Anti-CAA stance is a significant pillar of the marketing campaign being run by the opposition Congress-led alliance in addition to the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP)-Raijor Dal (RD) mix (the 2 events had been born out of the protests). However, the brand new regulation is lacking from the BJP’s manifesto, and largely absent from its marketing campaign within the Brahmaputra Valley.
The Brahmaputra Valley, spanning from Tinsukia in Upper Assam to Dhubri on the Bangladesh border in decrease Assam, accounts for 106 of the state’s 126 meeting constituencies. Additionally, there are 15 meeting constituencies within the Bengali-speaking Barak Valley in southern Assam, and 5 within the hill districts of Karbi Anglong, West Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao. Brahmaputra Valley’s 47 constituencies went to polls within the first part on March 27.
In 2016, when a BJP-led alliance (additionally that includes the AGP and the Bodoland People’s Front, or BPF, again then), stormed to energy for the primary time within the state, it received eight seats in Barak Valley and all 5 within the hills. Of the 47 seats that went to polls within the first part, the BJP alliance received 35. To retain energy, the occasion will want to repeat this efficiency in 2021.
BJP’s GAME PLAN
“Our aim is developed Assam, secure Assam,” senior chief and BJP minister Himanta Biswa mentioned on March 24, concluding his highway present in Naharkatia city forward of the primary part of polling on March 27.
Naharkatia, 40 kilometres from Chabua, is one other key constituency in Upper Assam the place BJP candidate Taranga Gogoi is pitted in opposition to Lurinjyoti Gogoi, the previous basic secretary of the AASU and the chief of the newly fashioned AJP.
Looking to retain energy for a second straight time period, the BJP has adopted a multi-pronged technique of highlighting its growth work and schemes, whereas attacking the Congress for aligning with the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF)’s Badruddin Ajmal, who the ruling alliance says is as an enemy of the Assamese identification.
“Those who sit with Ajmal, can they stop infiltration?” Union house minister Amit Shah requested in one among his election rallies in Nagaon district in February. “It’s only for the lust for power that it (the Congress) has joined hands with Ajmal,” Shah mentioned.
In Assam, the AIUDF is perceived to be a celebration having the help of Bengali-speaking Muslims, whose ancestors got here from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Many contend that these individuals pose a menace to the state’s cultural identification.
“We are focusing on development and threat perception. The culture and civilisation of Assam are under threat from people such as Badruddin Ajmal,” says Dilip Saikia, the BJP’s nationwide basic secretary and an MP from Assam’s Mangaldai.
The Congress rubbishes these allegations. “When they (the BJP) took the support of the AIUDF in local polls in Nagaon and Darrang, and the Rajya Sabha elections in the past, then there was no problem. Now, the AIUDF is opposing the BJP. So they have become a threat to the state. Those who are with the BJP are as pure as Ganga jal, and those who are not, like farmers in Punjab and Haryana, they become Khalistanis and terrorists,” Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, the Congress occasion’s observer for Assam, says, referring to farmers’ protests in opposition to three central legal guidelines.
The BJP wrested energy from the Congress in 2016, committing to defending jati, maati and bheti (identification, land and fireplace). Sarbananda Sonowal, a former AASU president regionally hailed as “jatiya nayak” (group’s hero) turned the chief minister.
CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES
Over three years later, the citizenship regulation put the BJP at odds with native sub-nationalist politics, which it partially co-opted to oust the Congress. But the BJP is assured that its outreach efforts will yield outcomes.
“The people who were opposing CAA realised there was a false campaign that crores of Bangladeshis will come to Assam with their bag and baggage,” Saikia says, sounding assured of the occasion’s efforts. “Most of the regional forces were opposing it (CAA). Even our alliance partner, the AGP, opposed it. But we braved all of it courageously.”
Saikia provides that many leaders who opposed the brand new regulation have joined the BJP. “It (CAA) is a national commitment. It is related to national security,” Saikia says.
And it was not simply CAA. The BJP discovered itself in a troublesome spot on the National Register of Citizens (NRC), an train carried out to determine undocumented migrants. While the BJP supported the train, the end result — the ultimate listing in August 2019 excluded 1.9 million individuals, together with a sizeable variety of Bengali Hindus — put it in a dilemma of types.
The native BJP management joined the refrain for rectification, claiming a lot of “intruders” have managed to escape the listing due to defective processes. The promise to usher in an correct NRC is among the many occasion’s manifesto guarantees.
In order to shore up its picture because the protector of Assamese pursuits, the BJP’s manifesto additionally guarantees a activity drive to recuperate encroached lands of sattras, or Vaishnavite monasteries, and legal guidelines in opposition to “land jihad” and “love jihad”, a time period used for forceful conversions by means of marriages. Among different guarantees, the manifesto says Assam’s political rights shall be protected by way of delimitation.
But lengthy earlier than the manifesto, the BJP had began strengthening its outreach to totally different sections by way of extra sops and extra schemes, whereas making an attempt to negate potential opposed impacts of identification politics.
Saikia explains how the occasion has reached out to 19 million beneficiaries of the central and state schemes. It has distributed land pattas to indigenous residents, which was a long-pending demand.
“We have contacted the beneficiaries, connected with them through social media and other programmes,” Saikia says of the outreach that started even earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic hit the nation in March 2020.
QUESTIONS REMAIN
While that helped the occasion to some extent, a senior BJP chief, who refuses to be named, factors to some “issues on the ground”, particularly on seats the place the AGP is contesting. “We have to put in a lot of effort. There are issues on most of the AGP seats, except one or two where they are comfortable,” this chief provides.
While the BJP is combating 92 seats, the AGP is contesting 26 constituencies; it’s in a pleasant contest with the BJP in 5 others, together with Naharkatia.
The AGP, a celebration of AASU activists born out of the Assam Agitation of the Nineteen Eighties, discovered itself in a good spot with its associate pushing for CAA. It withdrew help on the difficulty, solely to re-join the alliance later.
“We did not want to divide the votes further (which would have helped the Congress alliance),” a second senior BJP chief says, explaining why the occasion nonetheless selected to align with the AGP.
Another problem for the occasion may come within the 4 districts of Bodoland, the place it deserted its outdated ally, the BPF, and joined fingers with the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), which is led by Promode Boro, a former Bodo scholar chief who performed a key function within the new Bodo pact signed in 2020. The UPPL is contesting eight seats.
The BPF, which emerged because the single-largest occasion in final 12 months’s Bodoland Territorial Council polls however misplaced out to the BJP-UPPL alliance, has since joined fingers with the Congress. It is contesting all 12 seats that it received within the 2016 meeting polls.
Nonetheless, the senior BJP chief quoted above says the occasion is comfortably positioned. “We came first in 69 assembly segments in the 2019 national elections, even though we contested just 10 Lok Sabha seats (it won nine of them),” he provides. Assam has 14 Lok Sabha seats.
Saikia, too, seems assured. “We will come back to power with a good majority,” he says.
Disclaimer:Sadiq Naqvi is a contract journalist based mostly in Guwahati
