The defeat, however, brought out the fissures within the Congress, which it had somehow managed to keep under the carpet during the election campaign. These internal cracks are mainly related to the grand old party’s decision to ally with the AIUDF, mostly a Muslim party. Ajmal's party is seen by most Assamese as a communal party. As a result, Congress’s decision to ally with AIUDF only to gain power didn’t go well with many leaders of the party — and Sushmita Dev, president of All India Women Congress, was one of them.

Sushmita, daughter of former union minister and a powerful Congress leader from the region, Santosh Mohan Dev, recently resigned and joined the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, which has been trying once again to gain a foothold in the state. She hails from the Barak Valley, the region dominated by both Bengali Hindus and Muslims. But the Silchar Lok Sabha constituency, her family’s own turf, is mostly dominated by the Bengali Hindus. Her father had represented the constituency many times and she too got the opportunity to represent it in the 2014 elections. According to Sushmita’s political calculations, the Congress party’s bonding with AIUDF would only weaken her in the constituency and also in the region. The Barak Valley represents 15 assembly seats.

Actually, Sushmita’s base had already shown decline when she lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Silchar to BJP’s Rajdeep Roy. During the election campaign, BJP then promised to bring the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), which later was passed by the Narendra Modi government and is now known as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The Bengali Hindus of the Barak Valley have been long demanding citizenship and with the saffron party’s promise during the elections to bring it back after it failed initially to pass the bill in the Rajya Sabha in 2019, a large section from the community sided with the BJP. As a result, Sushmita, despite the absence of an AIUDF candidate, had to face defeat from her home turf. Although the combined vote share of Congress and AIUDF easily crossed the 50% mark in the 2014 elections, BJP was successful in winning the seat as many Bengali Hindus deserted the grand old party. Not only this, during this year’s assembly polls, BJP led NDA won in 4 of the 7 assembly constituencies falling under the Silchar Lok Sabha seat.

Sushmita herself in the past has always raised the issue of giving citizenship to the Bengali Hindus but when the BJP brought and successfully converted the citizenship bill into an act, she was unable to support it openly as the Congress stiffly opposed it. During the state election campaign too, it was believed that she wasn’t quite comfortable with the Congress-led Alliance making anti-CAA sentiment a crucial issue. She was also reportedly unhappy with the leadership, which, according to her, kept her in the dark regarding an alliance with AIUDF. Interestingly, her new party TMC too has been a strong critic of the CAA. It appears doubtful of Bengali Hindus largely supporting Mamata’s party in the region, despite a prominent face like Sushmita joining the party. Also, Bengali Muslims are divided between Congress and AIUDF, which was a weakening force but the grand old party’s eagerness to throw BJP out of power have strengthened the party. It will be difficult for TMC to gain a footprint in the region.

Coming to the main issue, a prominent youth leader like Sushmita leaving the grand old party is a jolt for the party. Her desertion comes after another youth leader Rupjyoti Kurmi left the party and joined the BJP. Rupjyoti, a four-time MLA from the Upper Assam belt, has been the party’s face from the Tea tribe community. The former Congress leader himself was against the alliance with AIUDF as he felt this won’t be supported by the large faction of his community. His stand was validated by the assembly results too. The BJP led alliance retained and also improved its performance this time from the areas influenced by the community, which comprises 17% of the state population.

The Congress party thought that the arithmetic would work and joined hands with AIUDF ignoring a section of its own leaders. In its desperation to anyhow defeat the BJP, Congress ignored the ground realities of the state. The problem is the grand old party’s organisation has considerably weakened in Assam — and also in other parts of the country. Unless the Congress resolves its internal organizational mess, its woes will continue.— Assam is the recent example of the failure of the party’s desperate alliance tactics without keeping its own organization in order. (IPA Service)