4 min readGuwahatiMay 4, 2026 07:52 PM IST
Assam’s political map has never looked starker. With the NDA set to sweep at least 100 of 126 seats, the only ones it has not won — barring two — are seats where minority voters form the bulk of voters.
The converse is just as stark. The Congress is set to win 19 seats. Of its winning candidates, 18 are Muslim leaders. With the number of seats across the state where Muslim candidates are likely to win pared down to around 22 from around 35 after the 2023 delimitation exercise, these seats have largely gone to the Congress, reflecting the pattern established in the 2024 Lok Sabha election of minority voters consolidating behind the grand old party. Apart from these Congress wins, the only victories for non-NDA parties are Akhil Gogoi in Sivasagar and Mehboob Muktar in Dhing from the Raijor Dal; Badruddin Ajmal in Binnakandi and Mazibur Rahman in Dalgaon from the AIUDF; and Sherman Ali in Mandia from the Trinamool Congress.
This means that apart from Akhil Gogoi and the Congress’s Joy Prakash Das in Nowboicha — both located in North and Upper Assam — the BJP and its allies, the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), have won all seats where ethnic Assamese communities, tribal communities, and Bengali Hindus form the bulk of voters. And apart from the two seats won by the AIUDF, the Mandia seat, and one win likely to be pulled off by the AGP’s Jibesh Roy in Bilasipara, all ‘minority seats’ have been won by the Congress-led alliance. The picture is a near-complete two-way split in representation.
The situation had been considerably more mixed in 2021, when the two major blocs were the BJP-AGP alliance with the Bodoland party UPPL on one hand, and a Congress-AIUDF-BPF alliance, which also included Left parties, on the other. As a result, the BJP had won 60 seats, the AGP 9, and the UPPL 6. The Congress had won 29, the AIUDF 16, and the CPI(M) one, and its allies had also won four tribal-majority seats that had been won by the BPF. Raijor Dal’s Akhil Gogoi had won Sivasagar as part of a third front.
Even in Central and Lower Assam, the Congress-led alliance had included MLAs such as Diganta Barman from Barkhetri, Sibamoni Borah from Batadraba, Nandita Das from Boko, and the CPI(M)’s Manoranjan Talukdar from Sorbhog.
Now, the UPPL — which has been dropped as an ally by the BJP — has failed to win even a single Bodoland seat on its own; and the AIUDF, no longer allied with the Congress, has been reduced to just two seats in the Assembly — its worst-ever performance since its formation.
The Congress’s performance in Upper and North Assam — home to ethnic Assamese communities and a large tea tribe population, and considered the ‘Assamese heartland’ — had been seen as grim in 2021. There were then 42 seats across these districts, of which the Congress had won only five. In this election, the number of seats in the region increased to 43 after the 2023 delimitation. The Congress focused efforts to reverse its fortunes here, including through a tie-up with regional parties Raijor Dal and the Assam Jatiya Parishad. However, it has won only one seat — Nowboicha — this time. The Raijor Dal has also won just one seat, retaining Akhil Gogoi’s Sivasagar, while the AJP has failed to open its account, with even its president Lurinjyoti Gogoi losing from Khowang.
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Not only are the numbers dismal, two of the Congress’s most prominent leaders in Assam — the party’s face in the state, Gaurav Gogoi, and Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Assembly, Debabrata Saikia — have lost from the Jorhat and Nazira seats in Upper Assam, leaving the party without its leading faces in the next Assembly.
The Congress and its alliance are set to have no presence in Assam’s tribal belts of the Bodoland region, or in the tribal-majority hill districts of Karbi Anglong, West Karbi Anglong, and Dima Hasao.
