A moment of reckoning for Badruddin Ajmal as his party, the AIUDF, faces drubbing in Assam

Reeling from its worst-ever performance in Lok Sabha elections since its formation, which leaves it without any representation in Parliament, the All India United Democratic Front faces a choice – course-correct before the 2026 Assam assembly elections or perish.

Since the formation of the party in 2005, its founder and leader Badruddin Ajmal, who also owns a perfume empire, has represented the Dhubri Lok Sabha constituency for three consecutive terms. This time, not only did he lose the seat, he lost it by a record-breaking margin of over 10 lakh votes to the Congress’s Rakibul Hussain – a seasoned leader and MLA who had never contested from Dhubri.

Since its formation, the identity of the AIUDF has been as a party representing the interests of the sizeable Bengal-Muslim population of the state, spread across Lower Assam, the Barak Barak Valley and Central Assam.

Assamese nationalist politics in the state is largely in opposition to Bengali-Muslims, who are often tagged as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh.

In the Dhubri seat, a vast majority of the voters – estimated to be over 80% – are Bengali-Muslims, so much so that BJP leaders have declared it to be an unwinnable seat for them. This time, though, the party supremo faced a resounding rejection in this seat where its primary voter base is concentrated. While the Congress received 59.9% of the vote share in the seat, the AIUDF came in second with just 18.72%. Not only in Dhubri, the numbers indicate that minority people voted in overwhelming numbers for Congress candidates in the two other seats in which the AIUDF contested – Karimganj and Nagaon. In both these seats as well, Muslim voters are well over half the electorate.

This is the first time that the party will