Election results 2024: Assam Congress is now ‘completely’ a Muslim party, says Chief Minister Himanta Sarma

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Muslims had switched from the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) to the Indian National Congress in the three-phase Assam Assembly elections.

He said the Indian National Congress had become a “completely” Islamic party and its vote share had not increased at the expense of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“The BJP’s vote share has also increased. We have seen AIUDF votes shifting to the Congress,” he told reporters on Thursday.

“The election results clearly show that Muslims, who constitute 40 per cent of the state’s voters, support the Congress Party in Assam. It remains to be seen whether they will remain with the Congress Party or revert to the AIUDF in the 2026 state assembly elections,” he said.

Of Assam’s 14 constituencies, the AIUDF contested in the heavily Scheduled Caste areas of Dhubri, Nagaon and Silchar. The party suffered a defeat in Dhubri, where perfume magnate Maulana Badruddin Ajmal lost to the Indian National Congress’s Rakibul Hussain by over 1,012,000 votes.

Ajmal had won from Dhubri constituency three consecutive times since 2009. State Congress member Aminul Islam and former MP Radheyshyam Biswas finished third in Nagaon and Silchar constituencies respectively.

Sarma said the BJP had won a large number of Muslim votes in Karimganj constituency due to local factors and issues with the Congress candidate.

The BJP won nine of the eleven seats it contested, while its allies the Asom Gana Parishad (two seats) and the United Bharatiya Party Liberal Party won one seat each. The Indian National Congress won three of the thirteen seats it contested, while its ally the Assam Jatiya Parishad failed to win the Dibrugarh seat.

The Prime Minister said the NDA got 46.3 per cent of the votes while the Indian National Congress-led Union got 37.48 per cent. “Our vote share has increased by 10 per cent since the 2019 elections. We outperformed other parties in 93 of the 126 Assembly constituencies in Assam, our vote share was higher than in 67 constituencies in 2019 and we increased our number of seats from nine to 11,” he said. “After Odisha, Assam is the only state where the NDA’s vote share has increased,” he added.

Analysing the NDA’s massive defeat in Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland, Sarma said the elections in these states were like a “religious war”.

“When religious people enter politics in these states, politicians cannot compete and their role is minimised. I think this is the reason why we have suffered in certain areas of the Northeast,” he said, admitting that in certain cases people have expressed their dissatisfaction through EVMs.

“It is difficult to understand that Agatha K Sangma (of the National Bharatiya Janata Party in Meghalaya’s Tura constituency) was defeated by a margin of over 1.5 lakh votes. But we performed well, winning all seats in Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Sikkim,” he said.