New Delhi: On June 4, electoral history was made in Dhubri, a parliamentary constituency that separates the north-eastern border state of Assam from Bangladesh. Senior Assamese Congress leader and the party’s candidate for the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat, Rakibul Hussain, polled a massive 14,71,885 votes.
This Lok Sabha election that has seen the winning margin of the biggest face of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – Prime Minister Narendra Modi – slide drastically. This is also an election that saw Rahul Gandhi, laughed at by the Modi supporters as a ‘pappu’ or fool, on a daily basis, win with the highest margin of votes in Uttar Pradesh, a state ruled by a saffron-clad BJP chief minister.
This is also a general election where the ruling party won the Indore Lok Sabha seat after the opposition candidate mysteriously withdrew his nomination papers and joined the BJP – leading the voters to register their rancour by pressing the NOTA button on the electronic voting machines (EVMs) as many as 2.18 lakh times – a poll record.
Congress candidate Rakibul Hussain’s impressive performance on June 4 also comes as an assurance to many that voters, whether in remote Dhubri or in the much more central, Indore, have ways of speaking up against subversion of democracy.
After all the votes were counted, Rakibul was 10,12,476 votes ahead of his next competitor — Badaruddin Ajmal, the founder of All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a multi-millionaire perfume seller-cum-maulvi. Ajmal is the face of political Islam in Assam, the favourite target of the BJP in the state, especially for the chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The chief minister often uses Ajmal to scare the Assamese Hindu and tribal voters lest they choose to leave his party in an election.
Ajmal is a Muslim of East Bengal origin. Hussain is an Assamese Muslim from middle Assam. Hussain had been a fellow minister of Sarma’s in previous Congress governments.
Sarma, now in the avatar of a Hindutva leader in his new party, had sought to erect Ajmal as the villain multiple times in speeches this time too. This tactic not only failed to increase BJP’s 2019 tally in Assam, it also could not stall the Congress from making electoral history by securing a win in his backyard with such a high margin, which is most likely a national record.
Additionally, on June 4, Assam, a state under a chief minister considered no less than a ‘Chanakya’ by some, has also noted a surge of vote share for the Congress, making it marginally higher than the BJP now. As per Election Commission data, while the BJP has 37.43%, Congress has 37.48% vote share in Assam.
If you pit the overall performance of the BJP against the Congress by including the rest of the Northeast, it is not difficult to note that the Opposition party outshone the ruling party and increased its 2019 tally at the cost of the BJP.
The displeasure of the chief minister was palpable when he admonished a party MLA in Assam – Mrinal Saikia – for congratulating Gaurav Gogoi, a Congress leader, for an impressive win. Gaurav defeated the BJP candidate Topon Gogoi by 1,44,393 votes.
An upset Saikia later took to X to upload a photo of former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee along with BJP leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to say — “I joined BJP impressed by these great leaders, who taught us respect others and give due respect to people irrespective of their political affiliation. I learned today from HCM Himanta Biswa Sarma sir that, to congratulate someone from the opposition is a crime nowadays.”
#Ideology
I joined BJP impressed by these great leaders, who taught us to respect others and give due respect to people irrespective of their political affiliation.I learned today from HCM @himantabiswa sir that, to congratulate someone from the opposition is a crime nowadays. pic.twitter.com/8QkzGPa4XX— Mrinal Saikia (@Mrinal_MLA) June 4, 2024
Advertisement
Talking about BJP in the pre-Modi era, Shivraj Singh Chouhan – the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister whose gentleness as a leader is often cited a reason for him being a ‘misfit’ in the Modi-Amit Shah led BJP – has polled a whopping 11,16,460 votes in Vidisha. This is nearly double the votes Modi polled in Varanasi. His numbers have beaten Amit Shah’s too.
It is to be seen now if this massive win brings Chouhan closer to occupying the chair of the party’s national president in the days to come, or whether he will be sidelined further by the powerful duo for a ‘yes’ man.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
