In BJP’s Assam poll narrative, Pakistan is the protagonist, ‘anti-national’ a leitmotif

Bangladesh has been an election staple in Assam. Pakistan, the country it was liberated from in 1971, has debuted as narrative material this poll season.

On Thursday (April 2, 2026), Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma slammed the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) chief Lurinjyoti Gogoi for fielding a candidate linked to ‘anti-national’ elements, including Sharjeel Imam, who had allegedly called for cutting off the northeastern region from the rest of the country.

The AJP is a constituent of the Congress-led Asom Sonmilito Morcha, the Opposition alliance. The candidate in question is 28-year-old Kunki Chowdhury, the London-educated AJP candidate for the Guwahati Central constituency pitted against Vijay Kumar Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

More than the candidate, the Chief Minister ranted against her mother, Sujata Gurung Chowdhury, for publicly supporting the “anti-India” Mr. Imam and Umar Khalid, both accused in the 2020 Delhi riots case and now in jail. He also criticised her mother for trashing the perception that Pakistan was an enemy nation.

Ms. Chowdhury hit back saying Mr. Sarma’s allegations against her mother were “entirely baseless” but thanked him for “letting the entire country know about me” by dragging her mother into the electoral rivalry. “The unnecessary controversy is working in my favour,” she said.

Gogoi’s Pak. ‘link’

During his campaign for the BJP, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said State Congress president and Jorhat MP Gaurav Gogoi should come clean on his visit to Pakistan more than a decade ago. “Such association with an enemy State is not appreciated by Indians in general,” he said.

Mr. Fadnavis had picked up from where his Assam counterpart had left off. On March 31, Mr. Sarma, the BJP’s candidate from the Jalukbari constituency, attacked Mr. Gogoi over alleged discrepancies in his election affidavit. The latter is contesting eastern Assam’s Jorhat Assembly seat, a constituent of the Jorhat parliamentary constituency he represents.

The Chief Minister said Mr. Gogoi’s affidavit did not disclose any Pakistani bank account, despite allegedly referring to such an account during a recent press conference.

“Any such financial details, including those linked to family members, should have been transparently declared in the affidavit. The omission is a serious issue, raising questions about the accuracy and completeness of the disclosures made by the candidate,” he said.

Earlier, Mr. Sarma had questioned Mr. Gogoi’s “suspicious” 10-day visit to Pakistan in December 2013 and his British wife, Elizabeth Colburn Gogoi’s professional stint with a climate organisation in the neighbouring country.

The Chief Minister had asked the Congress MP to disclose details of his visit to Pakistan months before he was elected to the Lok Sabha, during which he had “uncharacteristically” maintained “digital silence”. The Chief Minister had asked him to make public a letter allegedly issued by Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, leading to the modification of the itinerary in his visa.

In 2025, the Chief Minister had a Special Investigation Team of the Assam police formed to probe the Pakistan links of Mr. Gogoi and his wife.

‘Wild theory’

Mr. Gogoi described the allegations as a “wild theory” and said that such claims reflect the Chief Minister’s “weakness” on a sensitive issue like national security. “There is a difference between what Himanta Biswa Sarma is saying and what we are saying against him; his is a wild theory that exists only in his head,” he said.

Mr. Gogoi said that the Congress’s allegations against the Chief Minister relate to family, wealth, corruption, and the favours his wife’s company were getting from the government machinery. “These claims are backed by publicly available information,” he added.

Saadulla as poll material

Pakistan has also crept into the election narrative through Syed Muhammad Saadulla, the Prime Minister of Assam thrice between September 1938 and February 1946. A member of the All India Muslim League, he was also a part of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India.

Saadulla has featured prominently in the BJP’s poll-oriented narrative about infiltration and a conspiracy to make Assam a part of Pakistan. The party has been highlighting how he, as Prime Minister of Assam, encouraged the settlement of Muslims from East Bengal in Assam under the “grow more food” programme.

“Saadulla failed to make Assam a part of Pakistan because of the efforts of his successor, Gopinath Bordoloi, who our party honoured with the Bharat Ratna posthumously. Congress never gave him the respect Bordoloi deserved, and it is obvious why,” a BJP spokesperson said.

The only other time Pakistan became an electoral topic, albeit on a low scale, was in 1962, the year when the Assam Police Border Organisation was formed under the Prevention of Infiltration of Pakistani scheme. This organisation, a wing of the Assam police, was tasked with detecting and detaining Pakistanis who entered India illegally.

The Border police have had a major role in sending thousands to detention camps for suspected non-citizens via the Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam.

Published – April 03, 2026 08:25 pm IST