On 30th March, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma repeated his claims that the Congress party will disintegrate after the Lok Sabha elections, saying that BJP will open a branch office at the Congress office in Guwahati after leaders quit the party after some years. He predicted that there wouldn’t be any Hindus in the grand old party in the northeastern state by 2026, while the Muslim leaders will leave by 2032.
He announced, “By 2026, there will be no more Hindus in the Assam Congress and almost all the Muslims will leave the Congress by 2032. We will open a branch at Rajiv Bhawan as Mahanagar BJP. Many Congress leaders will join the BJP tomorrow.” The CM posted a video where he was making the claims while talking to the reporters, along with a Hindi version of his comments.
Rajiv Bhavan, the Assam Congress headquarters, is located in the centre of Guwahati at ABC on GS Road. Notably, due to dwindling finances, the Congress party is considering turning it into a commercial complex to earn rental income.
Himanta Biswa Sarma said that a large number of Congress leaders and workers are joining the BJP daily, which is not being reported in the media.
The Chief Minister made the remarks while on a visit to the state Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Guwahati where he also attended an important conference to assess the level of preparation for the general election. He added, “A meeting of the Prabharis of 126 assembly constituencies was held at the state BJP headquarters in Guwahati. Three members of Congress joined the BJP on Saturday. Others will join the BJP on Sunday. I will go to Majuli and my election campaign will start in Majuli on April 1 with a cycle rally.”
He further highlighted, “I am trying to work to reform their (Muslim) society. Many Muslim youths are supporting me, as you can see on Facebook and they all welcome this. No one opposes it.” Speaking about the Jorhat parliamentary seat, he assured that the BJP would emerge victorious there. “A section is trying to create an atmosphere against me, but the ground reality is different.”
“Why two right and left hands of the Congress candidate (Gaurav Gogoi) have left the party and joined the BJP because they know that there is no possibility of winning a chance,” he asked. According to him, political parties must ask the people for their blessings because they are the representatives of the masses. “The BJP will take the lead in 105 out of 126 assembly constituencies in the state. I am very confident that people will vote for us for the development work done by the government.”
He recently claimed that State Congress President Bhupen Borah is reportedly planning to join the BJP in the upcoming year, based on him. Additionally, he asserted that if he called several opposition figures only once, they would all defect to the BJP. He has been saying that except the Congress leaders from dynasty families, all other leaders are welcome to join the BJP, adding that most of them will do so in future.
The chief minister noted, “The Congress party in Assam does things after taking my advice. Barring one or two leaders who belong to blue-blood families, the rest of the leaders will eventually align themselves with the development politics. Bhupen Borah will join either in January or February of 2025. I have also selected two seats for him to fight the assembly polls.”
He added that Bharat Chandra Narah, a former minister and six-time MLA, is not in contact with the BJP. The latter resigned from Congress following the refusal of a ticket for his wife Ranee Narah by Congress. “The resignation of Bharat Narah is still an internal matter of Congress as he had not approached the BJP before quitting the party. He was not in touch with either me or my other colleagues.”
It is notable that in the last several weeks, a large number of Congress leaders and workers have defected to the BJP. Moreover, some Muslim leaders from the Congress party have joined AIUDF.
On 30th March, three Assamese Congress leaders, among them the general secretary of the state committee resigned from the party and became members of the BJP. Two of them were known to be close allies of the party’s candidate from Jorhat, Gaurav Gogoi, who is the deputy leader of the opposition in the outgoing Lok Sabha and the third was a senior leader of the Charaideo district party unit. Another top Congress leader and Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) spokesperson Kishore Bhattacharya also became a part of the BJP on 31st March.
On 21st March, in the presence of state cabinet minister Pijush Hazarika, over five hundred members of the Congress Party and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), most of whom belong to the minority community, joined the BJP at Town Hall in the Hailakandi district of Assam.