Shrinking the Minority Vote

On June 20, the day the Election Commission of India (ECI) published a draft proposal for the delimitation of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took to Twitter to express his "sadness" as Jalukbarihis constituency since 2001-had been redrawn with two core areas merged with other constituencies and new areas added elsewhere.

- Kaushik Deka

Sarma believes 70 per cent of his voters will be new when the state goes to the polls in 2026 but still welcomed the draft as "it accurately reflects the sentiments of Assam".

His detractors have no sympathy for his "loss". They claim the only purpose of the delimitation exercise is to help the ruling BJP win the polls by demarcating constituencies in such a way that the influence of Muslim voters shrinks from 45 constituencies to just 22-out of the total 126. The 2011 census pegged Assam's Muslim population at nearly 35 per cent. Some 65 per cent of the community are also Bangla speakers, who often invite charges of being 'illegal Bangladeshi immigrants'.

Opposition parties say, in vociferous unison, that the proposed redrawing of the electoral map is meant only to marginalise the impact of Bangla-speaking Muslims, who have traditionally backed the Congress and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) in the state. Of the 26 Congress MLAs in Assam's 126, 22 are from these 45 seats. As for the AIUDF, they account for all its 16 MLAs. Under the altered boundaries proposed in the draft, 10 of these 45 seats stand eliminated, and four have been merged into two. Two existing constituencies, Boko and Goalpara West, have been reserved for STs; another two, Barpeta and Hajo, for SCs. This will make it difficult for Muslims to even contest from these constituencies.