In Assam’s Bongaigaon, BJP workers back expelled leader and ally AGP’s candidate

On a rainy Friday morning, the field at the local secondary school in Bongaigaon town is being prepared for a campaign meeting to be addressed by sitting MLA Diptimayee Choudhury of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a party that emerged out of the Assam agitation. But there are barely any flags of the AGP’s ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party, at the meeting venue, even though Union Minister and BJP leader Sarbananda Sonowal was scheduled to speak for Ms. Choudhury.

The Bongaigaon Assembly constituency, part of the Barpeta Lok Sabha seat, the region known as one of the starting points of the Assam agitation, is headed to polls on April 9, along with the rest of Assam. The NDA has ceded the seat to the AGP, which has held it for the last 40 years. However, even as BJP workers campaign for Ms. Choudhury, a section of saffron party cadres in this region has also been supporting her rival, Chakradhar Das, a former BJP leader now contesting as an Independent candidate after being denied a ticket.

Mr. Das was among nine BJP members the party expelled on Friday, including two others contesting as Independents in the neighbouring Barpeta constituency.

Later that day, as the BJP’s district leadership met Ms. Choudhury at the party office in Bongaigaon town, workers from both the BJP and AGP outside spoke of Mr. Das having a “good chance as well”.

Parikshit Ray, once an AGP loyalist but now with the BJP, said, “He (Mr. Das) is secretly fighting under the BJP. He has done so much work for the people here. I have even helped him arrange a couple of public meetings in areas I am responsible for in the last couple of days. Even if he wins, it is going to benefit the people of Bongaigaon.”

A section of party workers speaks of “nepotism” in having Ms. Choudhury contest the seat, citing the fact that she is the wife of Phani Bhushan Choudhury, the current Lok Sabha MP from Barpeta. He held the Bongaigaon seat as an MLA consistently from the 1980s till 2024, when he contested and won the Lok Sabha elections. In the by-poll that followed, Ms. Choudhury won by about 35,000 votes, with a turnout of about 1.42 lakh. During the 2021 Assembly elections, the constituency had around 1.76 lakh voters.

In the New Bongaigaon railway colony, where a large number of Bengali Hindus and Muslims live, posters of Mr. Das from the days he was seeking a BJP ticket still hang on lamp posts. Abdul Khaleque, a 50-year-old pan-shop owner who has lived all his life in Bongaigaon, said, “We don’t concern ourselves too much. We just go and vote on the polling day. What can we say when the Chief Minister says things like, ‘Trouble the miyas (a pejorative for Muslims with roots in Bangladesh) as much as you can’.”

While Muslims are a minority in the constituency, the majority population comprises Koch Rajbongshis and Bengali Hindus, many of whom are categorised as Other Backward Classes. Even though the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led State Cabinet last year cleared a proposal to include the Koch Rajbongshis in the Scheduled Tribes list, a long-standing demand of the community, the issue has not featured prominently in the NDA’s campaign strategy this election in the region.

“What we are looking to focus on is the unidentified population of Muslims squatting on railway land in New Bongaigaon areas and the promise of further development under the BJP government,” said an OBC morcha leader of the saffron party, involved in strategising Ms. Choudhury’s campaign.