4 min readGuwahatiMar 9, 2026 07:30 AM IST
Assam regional party Raijor Dal said on Sunday that its potential alliance with the Congress for the upcoming Legislative Assembly election has collapsed, attributing this primarily to a stalemate over one particular constituency — Dhing — and accusing Assam Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi of “arrogance”.
The fallout between the two parties has been brewing for a while over seat-sharing arrangements.
On Friday, the Congress and three other parties, the Asom Jatiya Parishad, the All Party Hill Leaders Conference, and the CPI(M), announced that they would jointly campaign for the election. A glaring absence in this joint announcement was that of Raijor Ral and its chief, Akhil Gogoi — the Sivasagar MLA who has long been in talks to be a part of this potential alliance, but has frequently been in friction with the Congress over seat-sharing.
On Sunday, the Raijor Dal issued a long statement on the matter, which was read out to reporters by Akhil Gogoi. It called the meeting and joint announcement in the absence of the Raijor Dal on Friday “disrespectful”.
“What is the actual reason for the friendship of the Raijor Dal with the Congress coming to a halt? In one statement, from the point of view of numbers, it is because of one constituency that the alliance is on the verge of collapse,” the statement read.
The party said that it had initially requested 27 seats, out of a total of 126, but agreed to reduce this to 15 at the request of the Congress. It said that ultimately, the Congress agreed on 13 seats, and claimed that only four were from among the seats it had listed as those it preferred.
“Finally, desperate, we told them that we will accept all their conditions, but that we need the Dhing constituency, where we have a strong organisational base, to be left for us,” the party said, adding that a disagreement over this seat became the breaking point.
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It claimed that the party made several “sacrifices” over the years to build an alliance and accused the Congress of not being willing to make concessions.
“Why did the Congress break the alliance on March 6? Is there some fault here of the Raijor Dal? Let us be clear, we were being tolerant of all the strange talk of the Congress in the interest of the alliance. But the Congress wanted us to surrender. We do not agree to surrender. We set a modest target of 15 seats and a Common Minimum Programme. Gaurav Gogoi strongly opposed a Common Minimum Programme. They did not want to respect us and broke the alliance by displaying arrogance,” the Raijor Dal statement said.
However, Congress leader Mira Borthakur said that as of Sunday, the Congress had been trying to build the alliance.
“We have been saying throughout that we need the alliance in the greater interest of defeating the BJP. But in a party like ours, before taking the decision to not contest in a seat in favour of an ally, we need time to have detailed discussions and deliberations with our workers in the constituency to minimise chaos. But the Raijor Dal is not willing to give us this time and has been trying to keep us under pressure. Earlier today itself, I had met our president, Gaurav Gogoi, and he had said that he is travelling to Delhi and will try to finalise the matter with the central leadershp since ours is a national party. It was likely to be a matter of two-three days, but in the meantime, Akhil Gogoi has gone ahead and announced that the alliance has collapsed,” she said.
