Friday the 13th may scare ordinary mortals, not Assam’s political rivals. Both the ruling Congress and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the principal contenders in this election, braved popular perception about the 13th being inauspicious and claimed they would emerge winners.
State Congress vice-president Pankaj Bora is confident Tarun Gogoi will become chief minister the third time. “Our government has brought positive changes in all spheres and will continue to do the same in the next five years. We are confident of forming the next government with the BPF (Bodoland Peoples’ Front),” Bora said.
Some exit polls have forecast a hung House with the Congress as the single-largest party, while others have said the ruling party may scrape through with numbers close to the majority mark of 64 in the 126-member Assembly.
But at the other end of Guwahati, Opposition leader and AGP chief Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was equally bullish about his party’s return to power after 10 years. “All the Opposition parties are for a non-Congress government for people want change. We are sure of forming the government,” the two-time chief minister said.
Akhil Gogoi is not among the candidates but he is confident too. The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti leader, who has been at the forefront of an oust-Congress campaign by highlighting the ruling party’s alleged corruption in development schemes, says it will lose power as its seat count will fall by 20 from 53 in 2006.
Such has been Akhil’s campaign that even the state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said that the verdict would not only be for or against the Congress but also for or against the anti-graft crusader.
Chief minister Gogoi is counting on the “positive” changes ushered in by his government in the past five years. These include getting the top Ulfa leadership — barring Paresh Baruah — to the talks table, improved health care, better law and order and implementing the Sixth Pay Commission hike for state employees.
Out of power for 10 years, a negative result for the AGP would not necessarily mean a vote against regionalism but against its “squabbling, directionless, divided” collective leadership. It had won 24 seats in the last election and expects to win around 40 this time. The AGP had split several times in the past but in this election all splinter groups had joined hands to fight under one banner to keep its committed vote share intact.
For the BJP, which has been consistently winning 8-10 seats in the last three elections, failure to increase its tally will be seen as a setback. The party was an AGP ally once but they parted ways after the 2009 general elections.
The All India United Democratic Front, which espouses the cause of the minorities and won 10 seats in 2006, will find it difficult for it to hold on to its supporters unless it can be part of the next government. Most of its supporters earlier backed the Congress.
For the BPF, which had 11 seats, a good show will settle the debate fuelled by its rival Bodoland Progressive People’s Front that the former is not the only voice in the Bodoland.
The outcome is equally important for the Left, a fringe player with pockets of influence. If it can cling on to the three seats it won last time, it will be a consolation given the dire forecasts in Bengal and Kerala. But a hung verdict could give the communists, part of the AGP-led government in 1996, another chance to share power.
