In Assam’s contested political terrain, Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF is a key political player given its hold over minority votes. However, in the coming Assembly elections, all eyes will be on how the party associated with Bengali-speaking Muslims performs following its collapse in the 2024 Assembly elections in which Ajmal lost to the Congress’s Rakibul Hasan in Dhubri by more than 10-lakh votes.
The 2024 Lok Sabha result was bad news for the AIUDF, with distinct signs that its core base was looking at the Congress as an alternative. If the trend continues in the Assembly polls too, the Congress may post a decent performance in Lower Assam and the Barak Valley, though that may not be enough to defeat the BJP. Any signal that the Congress is becoming the favourite party of Bengali-speaking Muslims may polarise Upper Assam in a manner that the BJP reaps rich benefits there.
The AIUDF’s trajectory in Assam has been interesting since it was founded in 2005 and renamed four years later. The immediate trigger behind its formation was the repeal of the IMDT Act of 1983 by the Supreme Court in 2005 on a petition filed by Sarbananda Sonowal, current Union Minister and former Assam CM. The IMDT Act had laid the onus of proving someone an “illegal immigrant” on the government, which the indigenous Assamese saw as helping the undocumented migrants from across the border. The repeal of the Act, however, led to fear in the minds of Bengali-speaking Muslims and Ajmal floated his party to address their concerns.
The formation of the AIUDF dented the Congress’s Muslim votes, which fell from 58% in 2001 to 41% in 2011, academics Vikas Tripathi, Ahmed Tohidus Jaman and Dhruba Pratim Sharma write in a recent paper. However, the Congress still survived, the authors argue, because of a soft Hindutva slant of the Tarun Gogoi government. However, the BJP’s rise from 2016 brought a harder Hindutva position, where concerns around undocumented immigration from Bangladesh got aligned with indigenous Assamese concerns of a demographic shift.
The resultant polarisation seemed helpful both for the BJP and the AIUDF, as chunks of Bengali-speaking Muslims began to vote for the AIUDF and the counter-polarisation of Hindus also helped the BJP.
AIUDF’s political trajectory
There are eight Muslim-majority districts in Assam, where the minority community makes up an estimated 34% of the total population. The number of Assembly constituencies with strong Muslim influence is 45, while the number with an actual Muslim majority, which was earlier 30, is estimated at 22 after the last delimitation close to the Lok Sabha polls, political scientist Vikas Tripathi of Gauhati University told The Indian Express.
While the Congress led in 26 of these constituencies in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, it could win only 14 of these in the 2006 Assembly polls, with the AIUDF winning nine. The BJP won four.
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In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the AIUDF led in 22 of these seats and the Congress just 12, showing a significant shift among Bengali-speaking Muslims — who are the majority among Assam’s Muslims — regarding what they considered their party.
While the Congress recovered some ground in these seats in the 2011 Assembly polls, the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were a shocker for it, as it registered wins only in five of these, while the AIUDF won 22.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, the Congress and the AIUDF tied up to ensure that Muslim votes don’t split, but this led to counter-polarisation in Upper Assam, where the NDA won 43 seats and the Congress-led Mahajot just 12.
By the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress realised that its alliance with the AIUDF could alienate the Assamese majority voters and decided to contest alone. This election came as a shock for the AIUDF, as its support base went back to the Congress and it could not post a lead in even a single Muslim-majority Assembly seat. With Assam getting highly polarised on almost ethnic lines, Bengali-speaking Muslims decided to vote for the BJP’s main national rival rather than a small regional party. Tripathi, Jaman and Sharma argue in their paper that an important reason for this shift was the inability of the AIUDF to protect its voters during the NRC exercise, with nearly half of the 1.9 million people not making it to the final draft being Bengali Muslims.
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The BJP, on its part, has relied on a hard Hindutva line in the state, which not just makes it register major gains in Upper Assam but also polarises Hindus in the Barak Valley and Lower Assam. At the same time, it has subtly reached out to the Mahimal and Kiran Sheikh Muslims by promising them Scheduled Caste (SC) status, something that isn’t permitted as SC status is not available to Muslims and Christians. Through this, the party is looking at making dents in Barak Valley and Lower Assam, too, apart from its surge in Upper Assam.
The coming elections are a make-or-break contest for the AIUDF, as any repeat of its 2021 and 2024 debacles will make it very difficult for it to rise again. However, it may turn out to be good news for the Congress, which can hope to register a respectable tally in such a situation.
