Guwahati: Voters in Assam have changed the electoral landscape of the Dhubri parliamentary constituency, delivering a crushing defeat to All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) chief and former MP Badruddin Ajmal.
In a resounding victory last Tuesday, Congress leader Rakibul Hussain defeated Ajmal by a record margin of 10,12,476 votes. Hussain won over 14.71 lakh votes from the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat while Ajmal secured 4.59 lakh votes.
With this, Hussain achieved the second-highest victory margin in the country after Shankar Lalwani, BJP candidate from Indore who won by a margin of 11.75 lakh votes.
This change is being seen as a boost to the Congress’s prospects in the state, while leaving the AIUDF in a pitiable state it will find hard to recover from. The outcome also raises questions about the political future of Badruddin Ajmal — the 74-year-old perfume baron, reckoned as a faith healer among Bengal-origin Muslims — who was seeking a fourth term from Dhubri.
Ajmal first won the Lok Sabha elections from Dhubri, a former Congress stronghold, in 2009. He subsequently retained the seat with huge margins in 2014 and 2019. As the AIUDF grew stronger, the Congress lost support among Bengali Muslims.
This time around, the AIUDF had fielded candidates in Nagaon and Karimganj parliamentary constituencies apart from Dhubri. In Nagaon, Pradyut Bordoloi of the Congress retained the seat, while BJP’s Kripanath Mallah won in Karimganj after facing a tough fight from Congress’s Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury, who was previously associated with the AIUDF. He joined the Congress in 2023.
The party nominations in the Muslim-dominated Nagaon and Karimganj were seen as Ajmal’s strategy to harm the Congress. Over the past few years, the relationship between the AIUDF and the Congress, once allies in Assam, had soured — turning them into bitter rivals.
Reeling from the unexpected losses, a visibly shattered Ajmal told mediapersons Tuesday that he will proactively work for the party’s prospects in the 2026 assembly elections.
“We will take our time to analyse what went wrong… We will contemplate, and initiate an enquiry, too. Whatever happened does not deter us from fighting the 2026 elections. We will make a comeback,” said Ajmal.
He posted a video on social media Friday, announcing that he would be embarking on a pilgrimage to Mecca Sunday, and return to complete projects taken up for Dhubri and Barpeta constituencies.
“The fault lies with us. We haven’t been able to serve the way we should have. When I return from Haj, I’ll complete all the projects that I had taken up — bridges in Barpeta, university and medical college in Dhubri, a 100-bed hospital each in Dhubri and Barpeta. Maybe, we didn’t do enough to control the flood and erosion, but I will pray for people’s safety,” said an emotional Ajmal.
He also took pride in the fact that over 500 students of Ajmal Super 40 coaching centre under the Ajmal Foundation qualified in the NEET Examination this year, 60 of whom hail from Dhubri. Ajmal’s Super 40 project prepares students from disadvantaged sections of the society for medical and engineering studies.
However, according to the 2011 Census, the literacy rate in Dhubri is only 58.35 percent against the state’s 72.19 percent.
So, what went wrong in the past 15 years?
Dhubri, considered the gateway to western Assam has a glorious past. One of the oldest towns, it was an important administrative centre under British rule until the Partition. The river Brahmaputra flows through Dhubri.
It became a district in 1983 with seven assembly constituencies, of which four were located along the India-Bangladesh border. After the delimitation process, three assembly constituencies — Golakganj, Dhubri and Mankachar — now share a border with Bangladesh.
Following the delimitation exercise, political experts estimate Dhubri has about 26 lakh voters, of which 13 lakh are of East Bengal origin, and another 8 lakh are ‘Deshi’ Muslims (considered indigenous). There are also about 4.5 lakh Hindu voters.
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Lack of development, alienation
The winds of political change had been blowing for a while with Dhubri seeing no development over the past 15 years, said political analyst Adip Phukan.
“For an MP, three-terms was good enough time to do something. He could not bring in the development that was needed — connectivity, infrastructure, industrial growth, improved marketing for agricultural products. Naturally, an anti-establishment environment would build up against Ajmal because of the loopholes in his leadership,” said Phukan.
Moreover, an educated section has emerged from Dhubri, especially those of East Bengal origin, who “think different”. While people have remained economically backward, analysts feel that the government’s push for modern education replacing madrasa learning has proved beneficial for the rural youth.
It was a “challenge” by the Muslim voters of East Bengal origin, “to assert their identity” as Indians and part of the Assamese society, said Phukan.
“Not just in Dhubri, but also in Karimganj and Nagaon, it’s an uprising by the youth, the educated and progressive lot, who thought it wise to be part of a mainstream party than one that is considered radical. So, they must have voted for the Congress. These areas were once strongholds of the Congress,” he said.
Also, the community was mentally affected by the strategic racial slurs they have often been subjected to from different quarters, he added.
“Since the BJP came to power in Assam (2016), the Muslims of East Bengal origin have been treated disrespectfully — a trip to Dhubri or Barpeta would be compared to visiting Bangladesh, people from these places are taunted as ‘Miya’ (derogatory term for Bengal-origin Muslims) or Muslim ‘Moulabadi’ (radicals). Perhaps, it made them think that staying with Ajmal or AIUDF would not free them from such ethnic slurs despite having stayed in Assam for years and assimilated with the Assamese society,” he added.
Analysts also mentioned how Ajmal had alienated the East Bengal-origin Muslims from the mainstream Assamese society.
Harekrishna Deka, among the most noted writers from Assan, told ThePrint that Ajmal used to win elections on a single point agenda — “as the protector of Assam’s Muslim minority of Bengal origin”.
“He (Ajmal) also started casting a spell on the ordinary Muslim immigrants posing as a faith healer — an image propagated by his agents. But his image suffered when he failed to serve the community effectively. He also tried to reap political benefits by reportedly maintaining a secret understanding with the state CM, but it didn’t serve him well. Rather, he was left politically exposed,” he added.
The Assamese Hindus are not antagonistic to the immigrant Muslims — as long as they identify themselves as Assamese, and try to integrate themselves with the larger Assamese community, politically, to ensure that Assamese language speakers remain the dominant linguistic community, Deka explained.
Though the spread of Hindutva in recent years has disturbed the assimilation process to a considerable extent, the animus is not as strong as in the Hindi heartland, he observed.
“Ajmal tried to ensure a separate political identity apart from the Assamese Hindus, having treated them as a separate vote-bank. With his discomfiture now, a coming together of the nationalist Assamese and the immigrant community led by some educated leaders may be easier, but nothing is clear immediately,” said Deka.
According to Phukan, the Muslim electorate has understood that their support for the AIUDF would only benefit the BJP.
BJP ally and the regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) had fielded Zabed Islam from Mankachar, who finished third with 438,594 votes. Despite hailing from the Deshi Muslim community, and having clout in the constituency, Islam failed to win the confidence of the voters — “they do not trust any party that supports the BJP,” Deka said.
The road ahead
Phukan and Deka both believe it would now be difficult for the AIUDF to recover from the losses, not in time for the 2026 assembly elections.
“In Assam’s political landscape, they can’t stand again till 2026. Particularly, in the next two years, the AIUDF won’t be able to revive itself, as Congress has regained lost grounds among the Muslim electorate. Some AIUDF MLAs might join AGP or Congress, and the voters might also do the same,” said Phukan.
Deka believes that the Congress has a chance to find its political constituency among both Assamese nationalists and the immigrant Muslim population, as there would be a vacuum now. “But nothing can be taken for granted,” he said.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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