BJP wrests Assam’s Nagaon Lok Sabha seat from Congress after 7 years
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam on Friday wrested the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat from the state Congress after a seven-year gap, after BJP’s Devashish Sharma defeated All India United Democratic chief Badruddin Ajmal by a margin of 142,224 votes.
Congress’s Sibamoni Bora was left in third place with 129,492 votes.
Even before the results were officially declared, state chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took to X to celebrate the victory. “Under the leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, BJP has secured a decisive victory in the Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election, a seat previously held by the Congress,” Sarma wrote.
Devashish Sharma and the Nagaon Constituency
The winning candidate Sharma, who netted 714,349 votes, is a recently- retired IAS officer whose final posting was as deputy commissioner of Nagaon.
He was earlier posted as the deputy commissioner of Morigaon, adjacent to Nagaon. Three of the eight assembly seats in Nagaon Lok Sabha seat are from Morigaon and the remaining fall in Nagaon.
Polling at the minority-dominated central Assam seat took place on October 6.
The bypoll was necessitated by sitting Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi’s decision in March to resign from the party and join the BJP, on whose ticket he later secured an assembly election victory from the Dispur constituency.
Ajmal managed to bag 572,125 votes.
Reactions and Analysis
“It is clear that minority votes which used to get divided between our party and Congress all of those votes have come to our kitty this time. Congress is finished,” said Ajmal.
“It appears the Muslim community has become conformist to the incumbent regime and they have also been getting benefits of the government’s populist schemes,” said Akhil Ranjan Dutta, political science professor at Gauhati University.
“If the BJP and allies wins Nagaon this time, we will win all 126 assembly seats in 2031,” the CM had stated while campaigning last month.
“The Congress failed to fulfil the aspirations of the voters. The party lacked organisational efforts and their candidate was not seen as a strong and credible one. On the other hand, it was a revival of sorts for AIUDF and Ajmal after the 2024 debacle in Dhubri seat,” added Dutta.
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