The mandate in Assam has entrenched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) dominance in the state, coupled with the dependence of major regional parties on it. The BJP, which secured 82 seats, got a majority of its own for the first time, while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as a whole secured 102 seats in the 126-member assembly.
The third consecutive return of the NDA is marked by five distinctive features in the party politics of the state. First, the BJP could secure a majority of its own. Second, the emergence of a strong bipolar party alliance with the Congress-led bloc and the BJP-led grouping securing around 90 per cent vote share and 98 per cent seat share between them. Third, the continued decline of a prominent regional party—the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF); it could win just two seats with around five per cent vote share, the lowest since its formation. Fourth, the strong performance of BJP allies—the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF). Fifth, the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) could open its account for the first time in Assam.
Regional parties do not present a monolithic space and the state has a variety of regional parties, each with a distinct ideological vision, leadership, social base and territorial hold. There are no statewide regional parties with an ideological vision transcending linguistic, religious, ethnic and regional boundaries. The regional parties in Assam are mostly subregional in nature, having a distinct subregional presence and drawing their social base from communities concentrated in specific regions of the state.
For instance, the BPF dominates the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) constituencies, while the AIUDF has a strong presence among East Bengal-origin Muslim communities in Lower Assam and Barak Valley. These parties are localised in nature, and none among them had the numerical strength to become an alternative to incumbent governments since the last Prafulla Mahanta government. Mahanta, the co-founder and former president of the AGP, was the chief minister from 1985-90 and 1996-2001. Alliances with national parties, either the Congress or the BJP, were never about the possibilities of politics but a compulsion arising out of numerical weakness.
The asymmetric character of federalism also imparts greater leverage to the party in power at the Centre. The greater the dominance of such a party/alliance, the weaker the bargaining capacity of regional parties in Assam. This phenomenon is due to the power of the Union government with regard to the most pertinent issues like citizenship, grant of Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to indigenous communities, financial aid to autonomous councils and the development of key infrastructure in the border region.
Moreover, the Central government’s direct outreach to ethnic communities—like the Bodos in the BTR, the tea tribes and other prominent communities in Upper Assam—shrinks the political space for an autonomous electoral expansion of regional parties in Assam. It can be considered the structural weakness facing regional parties in Assam.
The dominance that the BJP secured in Assam over a decade is a vital factor in understanding the changing character of regional parties in the state.
The regional parties became active participants in the making of a bipolar state, with the Congress and the BJP emerging as the two poles after the formation of the first NDA government in 2016. The regional alliance architecture stitched by the BJP enhanced its political acceptability as well as the legitimacy of the party’s cultural agenda in a deeply diverse ethnic setting. Further, along with the deepening of dependency of prominent regional parties, such an alliance architecture kept the Congress in check as the alliance options before the latter became quite self-limiting.
The BJP’s ability to retain its alliance structure since 2016 has helped the party in monopolising the ethno-linguistic and regional space in Assam. The alliance with two prominent regional parties with a decent vote share and seat share helped the BJP as the Congress forged alliances with regional parties that, in reality, had a meagre electoral footprint in the state.
While Congress ally Raijor Dal had just one Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) did not have a single MLA in the last Assembly elections. In the 2026 elections, Raijor Dal secured two seats, but the AJP failed to open its account yet again. In all, the allies’ contribution to the Congress-led alliance was just two seats in this election.
The dominance that the BJP secured in Assam over a decade is a vital factor in understanding the changing character of regional parties as well as the political discourse in the state. The mandate has to be seen in the context of the political change in Assam since 2014, marking the consistent decline of the Congress party and the concomitant rise of the BJP, eventually culminating in the emergence of a BJP-dominant system. The latter is characterised by the personality cult of Himanta Biswa Sarma, a regional alliance architecture, a top-down organisational structure and an ideological vision anchored in the Hindu civilisational narrative. This organisational dominance has been instrumental in crafting a leadership cult and seamless distribution of beneficiary schemes, mostly catering to women voters.
Thus, the leadership of the incumbent chief minister and the deepening of beneficiary politics are the two most significant factors contributing to the voter surge as well as the massive mandate in favour of the NDA in the recent elections. The state witnessed a wave of women beneficiaries voting for the incumbent alliance.
The organisational politics and leadership cult moderate the impact of localised and regional issues while contributing to the massive nationalisation of elections. The vitality of beneficiary politics makes regional parties more vulnerable, as they acknowledge its significance in swinging elections and need the organisational backing of the BJP to reach out to its voters for the same.
The rise of this systemic dominance has made the electoral space disadvantaged for the Congress because of the structural weakness of regional parties (as discussed above) and the deeper entrenchment of the Hindu civilisational narrative woven around the persona of Sarma.
With a significant population of East Bengal-origin Muslims, the propagation of the Hindu civilisational narrative contributed to peak religious polarisation in the state, and only three Hindu candidates from the Opposition were elected.
The divide along religious lines is both unprecedented and deeply disadvantageous to the Opposition parties in contemporary Assam. The Opposition alliance could win only those seats dominated by East Bengal-origin Muslims. The delimitation of Assembly constituencies in 2023 further contributed to the shrinking of the Opposition’s electoral space.
The performance of regional parties and the challenges they faced in the Assembly elections may be attributed to the structural constraints in Assam, yet it assumes salience given the preponderance of beneficiary politics, religious polarisation, the emergence of an ideological anchor woven around the Hindu civilisational narrative, and the informal means that the Union government used to entrench its dominance in the politics of states. These issues remained integral to all four states that went to the polls—for instance, the contest of beneficiary politics and Hindu civilisational politics was at the centre in West Bengal.
Eventually, the moderation of the impact of welfare politics, coupled with a steep religious polarisation, determined the victory of the BJP in the state. Though there were other long-term factors too, the immediate context of a nationalised election became its primary determinant.
(Views expressed are personal)
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Vikas Tripathi is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Gauhati University
