As Assam votes today, Bengali-Muslim voters the decisive factor in five seats

Five constituencies in central Assam and the Barak Valley will go to polls on Friday, with the balance of demography expected to play a key role in the outcome. Several of the constituencies of Nagaon, Diphu, Darrang-Udalguri, Silchar, and Karimganj have undergone significant changes in last year’s delimitation exercise.

The decisive role expected to be played by Bengali Muslim voters in this phase has borne an unusual sight. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP’s primary campaigner in Assam — who has in the past declared that the BJP “does not need Miya (a pejorative term for Bengali Muslims) votes in 2024” — has been focusing on the large turnouts at his rallies in Bengali Muslim-majority areas such as Dhing, Laharighat, Rupohi, and Hailakandi. “When elections come, I will myself request them not to vote for us. Vote for us only after you follow family planning, stop child marriage, and shed fundamentalism,” Sarma told reporters last October.

On Wednesday, he told a large gathering in Laharighat, a Bengali Muslim majority area in Nagaon, “This is a BJP meeting, you all tell me how many Muslims are here. Outside Assam, people won’t believe that 50,000 Muslims attended a BJP meeting. Today in Assam, everyone has one voice, be it Hindu or Muslim. ‘Ab ki baar, Modi Sarkar (Next time, we will elect a Modi government)’.”

He also claimed that the BJP had given a boost to development “without appeasement”, declaring that the BJP’s welfare schemes were reaching all citizens, including Muslims.

The number of Muslim voters – mostly Bengali-speaking – in Nagaon has increased to well over 50% after the three Assembly segments of Dhing, Rupahihat and Samaguri were transferred to it from the erstwhile Kaliabor seat and other