Summary of this article
NDA races past majority in the 126-seat assembly, putting Sarma on course for a second term and BJP for a third consecutive victory.
Centralised leadership, aggressive expansion, and weakening of the Congress behind Assam’s political landscape.
Congress-led front faces structural decline, with Gaurav Gogoi’s leadership challenge deepening after another likely defeat.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has crossed the majority mark in Assam and kept surging, leading in over 90 of the 126 assembly constituencies as counting of votes continued on Monday, putting Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma firmly on course for a second consecutive term and the party on the cusp of a historic third.
The magic figure in the 126-seat Assam assembly is 64. The NDA has blown past it. With trends still coming in, the BJP is headed for a mandate that far exceeds what most expected. This win would consolidate its grip over the Northeast’s most politically significant state.
Sarma himself is leading in Jalukbari by over 63,000 votes, facing no serious challenge from Congress newcomer Bidisha Neog. In Jalukbari, where Sarma made his electoral debut in 1996, he has remained unbeaten since 2001. Today’s margin is not just a win, but a demolition.
The result carries the weight of a full political arc. Sarma spent 15 years in the Congress before crossing over in 2015 in what was the most consequential political shift in Assam in a generation. He arrived in the BJP with an insider’s understanding of the Congress’s faultlines, he knew which leaders were ambitious, which were sidelined, which had been out of power long enough to consider a move.
According to Akhil Ranjan Dutta, Professor of Political Science at Gauhati University, Sarma has “played a central role in reshaping the party’s structure and strategy,” moving it toward “a more aggressive, results-driven political model, focused less on earlier ideological framing and more on electoral consolidation.” State party presidents, Dutta observes, once played a more central and independent role in organisational decisions. That balance has shifted entirely, with the chief minister now the dominant force in both governance and party affairs.
A central plank of that model has been the systematic effort to make Assam Congress-mukt. This was done not simply by outperforming the Congress at elections, but by drawing away the leaders who could rebuild it. The particular target, experts say, has been Gaurav Gogoi. By inducting senior Congress figures before they can consolidate around Gogoi’s leadership, Sarma has weakened the party structurally and sapped its internal morale. Dutta notes this strategy serves Sarma two purposes: “First, it reinforces the perception that real decision-making power within the BJP in Assam rests with him. Second, it advances a systematic effort to dismantle the Congress in the state.”
The irony is that the strategy drew fire from within his own party too. BJP leader Pabitra Margherita accused Sarma of converting the BJP into a “Congress BJP.” The Congress, for its part, was happy to agree, posting after the candidate list was released that “veteran leaders and workers loyal to the saffron party are gradually being erased from the organisation”, simultaneously attacking the BJP and defending its own defectors’ new career choices. Sarma brushed it all aside, projecting confidence throughout that old loyalties would reassert themselves once the campaign heated up. Monday’s trends suggest he was right.
A third consecutive victory for the BJP would mark a deeply personal triumph over Gogoi specifically. Just two days ago, Gogoi had expressed confidence that “we are forming the next government". As trends turned heavily against that promise, he called BJP’s massive lead “just the beginning".
Vikas Tripathi, political scientist at Gauhati University, argues the BJP under Sarma operates less like a conventional party and more like a political system. “It doesn’t just talk about winning 65 seats, it sets its sights on 100,” he says. “That shift shows it is not merely about forming a government anymore, but about agenda-setting and shaping policy direction in the state".
Beyond membership, the BJP under Sarma offers relevance, safe seats, institutional access, and a defined position within a structure where power is centralised around one man.
The BJP’s alliance partners, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodo People’s Front (BPF), appear to have held their ground, giving the NDA enough breadth to make the majority mark look comfortable. The United People's Party Liberal (UPPL), which exited the NDA over seat-sharing disputes and contested independently, has not been able to hurt the ruling combine in any meaningful way.
In 2021, the NDA won 75 seats, with the BJP securing 60. If today’s trends hold, the party will have substantially improved on that, a result that not only secures Sarma’s position in Dispur but sharpens a national profile that BJP’s central leadership has watched with close interest.
For the Opposition, the coming days will demand serious reckoning on alliance cohesion, on candidate selection, and on whether Gogoi’s vision of a new Assam can ever be built from the rubble of a third consecutive defeat.
