The BJP victory caused a surprise to many, not only in the Congress, as it came within days of widespread anti-BJP demonstrations across the State on the issue of the status of the north-easterners. The BJP poll manifesto for the Delhi Assembly elections had inadvertently referred to people from the north-east as ‘immigrants’. By the time the mistake was corrected, the damage had been done.

The main reason for the BJP’s success in the civic polls is the suicidal factional feuds in the State Congress between three groups: one loyal to Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, the other to PCC president Anjan Dutta and the third to former minister Himanta Biswa Sharma who is now leading the flock of dissident Congress legislators.. Each was out to sabotage the prospects of the others. The victim was the party which is already passing through bad days.

To give some examples, the Congress lost the Silchar Municipality, one of its few remaining bastions in Assam. The Congress had reigned over this municipality for decades. The BJP won 17 out of 28 seats, wresting it from the Congress. Reason? There was intense rivalry between two groups: one led by Gautam Roy, a powerful politician who was recently removed from the State Cabinet by Chief Minister Gogoi and the other owing allegiance to Sushmita Deb (one of the 44 Congress MPs in Lok Sabha) daughter of former Steel Minister Santosh Mohan Deb. In the end, both destroyed themselves and BJP came out with flying colours.

Take another Congress bastion, the Nalbari municipality. Here there was a fight between the PCC president Anjan Dutta’s group and his rival, dissident leader and recently sacked minister Himanta Biswa Sharma’s group. Both factions lost and the civic body went to the BJP.

To give another instance, in the elections to the Roha municipality, which was traditionally held by the Congress, the party failed to win a single seat. The two rival groups, one led by Biswa Sharma and the other by the party president Anjan Dutta, were out to finish each other. In the end, they succeeded in finishing the party itself.

Another important factor for the Congress defeat was the rampant corruption prevailing in almost every department of the State Government – whether it is health or education or agriculture or PWD or the food and civil supplies department. In the last named, a massive fraud of issuing four lakh bogus ration cards has been detected and the case is now before the Gauhati High Court.

Unless the Congress High Command deals firmly with corruption and imposes a minimum discipline in the party by stamping out factionalism, whatever the cost, the party is foredoomed to face disaster in the next year’s Assembly polls. It will not be able to take advantage of the growing discontent among the Bengali Hindus and Muslims against the BJP because many of them fear they are going to lose their voting rights in the State they have been living in for generations.

The fear arises from the recent circular of the Union Home Ministry to prepare a National Register of Citizens (NRC) taking March 25, 1971, as the cut-off year. Only those whose names were recorded in the previous NRC, prepared decades ago, and their descendants, will have the right to vote. Those who came after that date, whether they are illegal immigrants or genuine Indian citizens, will not be eligible to vote. Even senior Assam Government officials belonging to the all-India cadre who have been working in Assam for years on end, will be deprived of voting right.

Already, the Election Commission has put the names of 37 lakh voters, mainly Bengalis, in the ‘D’ or ‘doubtful’ voters’ category. They cannot exercise their franchise till their fate is decided. But the fate is hanging fire for years. As a result of the recent MHA circular, another five million Bengali voters are likely to be disenfranchised unless they can prove to the satisfaction of the authorities that they came before the cut-off date. These people are being asked to give the names of their paternal and maternal grandfathers and the places where they were born. The MHA has notified that the new NRC will have to be prepared by January 16, 2016.

The Bengali Hindus and Muslims are apprehensive that not only with their names be permanently removed from the electoral rolls but they may eventually have to leave Assam and seek shelter in other States, especially West Bengal. If the Modi Government really intends to do what it says, then there will be strong resistance from the people who are going to be disenfranchised with all its concomitant consequences. (IPA Service)