New Delhi: Congress leaders who defected to the BJP before Assam Assembly elections this April performed well while those who went the opposite way faced headwinds, results declared by the Election Commission Monday show.
Days before the state went to the polls, the sitting cabinet minister, Nandita Gorlosa, a powerful tribal voice from the Dima Hasao region, resigned from the BJP following the denial of a ticket and joined the Congress.
She was fielded by the Congress from the Haflong (ST) constituency, a seat she won last time.
Gorlosa came in third in the constituency, won by BJP’s Rupali Langthasa.
She wasn’t the only one from the BJP to switch sides before the polls.
Former Assam BJP vice-president and party veteran Jayanta Kumar Das also resigned from the party and contested as an Independent candidate from Dispur, a seat where the BJP has fielded Congress rebel Pradyut Bordoloi.
Bordoloi won from the constituency.
Amar Chand Jain, a former BJP MLA from Katigorah, also joined the Congress after being denied a ticket from the BJP. The Congress fielded him from the constituency, where he lost ground to BJP’s Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha.
Purkayastha, a former MLA, was also fielded by the BJP after joining the party from the Congress.
BJP election in-charge Baijayant Panda had defended the party’s decision not to renominate several sitting MLAs, saying that those who had quit the BJP were never really part of it. “Those who have quit the BJP are junior people; these are people who were denied tickets. Now, when people are denied tickets and they change parties, they were never (with the) BJP to begin with,” Panda told ThePrint.
“So we have had a couple of minor figures who have left, whereas senior leaders from the Congress, considered very significant, have quit and joined us,” he added.
Weeks before the polls, Assam BJP had also expelled nine leaders for contesting independently against the party’s officially nominated candidates. They included Uddhav Das, Jayanta Kumar Das, Jitendra Singh Gour, Amalendu Das, Dhanjit Rabha, Chakradhar Das, Gagan Chandra Haloi, Ankur Das, Yashoda Dulal and Rakshit.
However, defection was not limited to the BJP. Bordoloi, a two-time MP from Nagaon in Assam and a former minister in the Tarun Gogoi government, was among those who resigned from the Congress and joined the BJP.
The BJP fielded Bordoloi from Dispur in place of Atul Bora, who represented the constituency for five terms.
The Lok Sabha MP from Nagaon had accused the Congress leadership of sidelining him and had targeted Assam Congress chief Gaurav Gogoi.
Bordoloi was pitted against Assam Mahila Congress president Mira Borthakur Goswami, who came in second.
The BJP also gave a ticket to former Assam Congress chief Bhupen Kumar Borah, who had resigned from the party months before the Assam elections over differences with the state leadership. He had also raised questions over Gaurav Gogoi’s functioning.
The BJP fielded Borah from Bihpuria constituency in place of its sitting MLA Amiya Kumar Bhuyan, who had defeated Borah, then the Congress’s candidate in the constituency, in the 2021 election.
Borah won from the seat, results showed Monday.
Sashi Kanta Das, a sitting MLA, quit the Congress and joined the BJP before the polls and was fielded by the BJP from the Raha (SC) constituency. He won against Congress’s Utpal Bania.
The BJP, which won 60 seats in the 2021 polls, contested the 2026 elections in an alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF). The BJP contested 89 seats, the AGP 26, and the BPF 11.
The BJP campaigned aggressively in the state with Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma making ‘miyas’, a term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims, the main target of his attacks, while also showcasing his government’s infrastructure push. He also promised to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) if voted to power.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)