The recent assembly elections in Assam, with results out in mid-May, represent a turning point in the state's political evolution. New outfits are jostling for political space with the older ones, and in many cases replacing them. The discourse that has dominated state politics for decades seems to be gradually taking new contours. An erstwhile militant group has successfully joined mainstream democratic politics. And 'minority politics' has made its presence felt. Moreover, beating the anti-incumbency trend, the Congress (I) has returned to power in the state, albeit with a diminished mandate. To understand these trends, it is important to locate them in their specific state contexts and to trace the micro-processes that influenced the poll outcome.
Since 1979, the issue of illegal large-scale immigration from Bangladesh has dominated the political discourse in Assam. In 1983, when the Congress (I) was in power at the Centre, the Indian Parliament passed the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, or IMDT, a controversial legislation on immigration applicable only to the state of Assam. Under the Act, the onus of proving the citizenship credentials of a person lies with the complainant and the police, not the accused. Since then, elections have been fought with parties aligned on either side of the IMDT divide. The Congress and the Left parties have supported the act, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other regional outfits like the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) had opposed it.
The IMDT Act dominated the 2006 elections as well. The emphasis was not the Act itself, but the fact that the Supreme Court had struck it down as unconstitutional, following a petition by Sarbananda Sonowal, a former president of the All-Assam Student's Union and a sitting member of Parliament of the AGP. The court found that the IMDT and its rules had been so made that insurmountable difficulties were created in identification and deportation of illegal migrants. This once again polarised the political arena; but ironically, this time the Congress was put on the other side of the IMDT fence.
In an effort to retain its vote base among the immigrant Muslims, the Congress rushed through an ordinance that was almost a carbon copy of the IMDT. Despite this, many minority organisations blamed Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and the Congress for not doing enough to retain the Act. As a consequence, a conglomerate of 13 mainly Muslim organisations came together and formed a party called the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), led by perfume dealer and business tycoon Badruddin Ajmal. This party did not make a secret of its support to the IMDT or its resolve to fight for the cause of the minorities.