The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
In ‘Assamese heartland’, BJP looks to retain hold, Cong eyes lost ground
THE “ASSAMESE heartland” has largely transformed into a BJP stronghold over the last decade. As five seats in Upper Assam vote in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections Friday, the INDIA bloc will look to regain its lost ground there.
The BJP has MPS in four of these five seats — Tezpur (now Sonitpur), Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur and Jorhat — while Kaliabor that was once the last Congress bastion in this belt and represented by Gaurav Gogoi has been redrawn,transformedandrenamed “Kaziranga”afterlastyear’sdelimitation exercise. Gogoi is now trying his hand from Jorhat against BJP MP Topon Gogoi in one of the most hotly contested seats in the first phase. The rest of the state will vote in the second and third phases on April 26 and May 7.
Union Minister Sarbanada Sonowal from the BJP is contesting against Congress ally Lurinjyotigogoioftheasomjatiya Parishad and the AAP’S Manoj Dhanowar while BJP MP Pradan Baruah from Lakhimpur is being challenged by the Congress’s Uday Shankar Hazarika. In Sonitpur, the BJP’S Ranjit Dutta, thecongress’spremlalganju,and the AAP’S Rishiraj Kaudinya are in the race while in Kaziranga, the contest is largely between the BJP’S Kamakhya Prasad Tasa and the Congress’s Roselina Tirkey.
In the last 10 years, the BJP has consolidateditsholdoverthisbelt, winning all seats except Kaliabor inthelasttwoparliamentaryelections. This was a big turn in the tide compared to the 2009 elections when four Congress MPS and an Asom Gana Parishad MP wereelectedfromtheseseats.the AGP is an NDA ally. It is over unfulfilledpromisesovertheseyears that the Opposition has largely been hitting out at the BJP.
This is particularly true of the BJP’S promises to tea garden workers and to six communities — tea tribes or Adivasi, Moran, Motok, Tai Ahom, Chutia, and Koch-rajbongshi — who have long been demanding Scheduled Tribe status.
The Congress has reached out totheteagardenworkercommunity, who are estimated to constitute close to 40% of the voters across these five seats, through a mention in its manifesto. The partyistryingtowinbackthevote of what was once its traditional support base but has largely moved over to the BJP over the years. “We will ensure that tea garden workers receive fair wages andotherbenefitsinaccordance,” says the party manifesto.
After a hike last year, the current wages of tea garden workers in the Brahmaputra Valley is `250 per day. The issue of a wage hike has been a recurring one in all elections. As of the 2019 elections, the daily wage was `167. The other issue that the Congress has been pushing is the demand for ST status for the six communities that make up a sizeable chunk of voters across these five seats. Before the 2019 polls, the BJP said it supported the demand. While the ST status still remains elusive — the communities are categorised as OBC — the Bjp-led state government has made special reservations for these communities in several fields.
All Moran Students’ Union chief Palindra Bora said while he thought that this demand being leftpendingmighthaveanimpact, a vote for Congress was not an answer either. “The promise started with the Congress government and it continues. The demand has beeninexistencesinceourorganisation was formed in 1968. Who do we trust then?” he asked.
And while the ST status remains pending for the Adivasi tea garden worker community, other welfare measures by the BJP government mean that trust has not completely eroded. “It is true that the BJP has done work in the tea gardens. Despite that, the ST status is our birthright and we will continue to fight for that,” said All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam vice-president Debeng Urang.
The BJP is banking on welfare measures and schemes targeting these communities and women voters to retain its hold over Upper Assam, where the Opposition once tried again to harness the opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act — its resonance was strongest in this region. The strategy failed to yield dividends in the 2021 Assembly elections and is not a talking point this time. However, an overriding factor of discontent across the belt, including among supporters of the BJP, is price rise.