​Cost of success: On the BJP’s victory in Assam

Himanta Biswa Sarma is expected to take oath as Chief Minister after leading the BJP to power in Assam yet again. Mr. Sarma was a Congress leader when the party came to power in the north-eastern State in 2011, but switching sides in 2015, he became the central figure of the BJP not only in Assam but also in States around it. Starting in 2001 on a Congress ticket, he has won six consecutive elections from the same Assembly seat. Having emerged as a very powerful leader, he joined the BJP, and was appointed Chief Minister in 2021. Since then, he has reshaped the politics of the State through exceptional organisational ability, communal rhetoric, and the partisan use of state power. An infrastructure push combined with welfare delivery — the Orunodoi scheme of direct cash transfer to women and Mission Basundhara, a flagship initiative to streamline and digitise land records and protect land rights — not only enabled the BJP’s deep expansion, but along with other measures, including the delimitation of Assembly constituencies in 2023, reshaped the State’s political landscape. Mr. Sarma has been both the creator and the principal beneficiary of this process.

The BJP’s victory in Assam has significant implications for power dynamics within the party nationally. Mr. Sarma is perceived to be close to Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The BJP alone commands a majority in the 126-strong Assembly, and the ruling coalition has 102 members. The BJP has not only decimated the Opposition but also rendered regional parties inconsequential. It has consolidated a spectrum of fragmented social groups and diluted the linguistic and ethnic politics of the State. But in doing so, it has sharply polarised Assam along religious lines. The delimitation carved out constituencies by packing and cracking communities in ways that suppress Muslim representation, with the BJP and the Congress now mirroring a Hindu-Muslim binary in the newly elected Assembly. Eviction drives have disproportionately targeted Bengali-speaking Muslim communities; 40,000 individuals were displaced in 2025 alone, officially framed as anti-encroachment action but widely seen as selective targeting. Assam is a sensitive border region, and the BJP’s approach to its governance needs to be commensurately sensitive. All parties have a legitimate right to consolidate themselves and win elections. But that must be done with the utmost attention to the long-term health of the polity and the interests of the country as a whole. At this moment of triumph, the BJP in Assam would do well to reflect on the costs of the victory that it has just secured.