Guwahati, May 8: Cracks have begun to emerge within the Opposition alliance after the debacle in the elections with Raijor Dal leader Akhil Gogoi criticising the Opposition-led Congress for lacking a strategy to counter the BJP.
Gogoi is among the only 21 candidates from the Opposition alliance who won in the recently concluded polls. The Raijor Dal secured victory in two of the 13 seats it contested, while the Congress won 19 out of the 100 seats it fielded candidates in.
The Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), led by Lurinjyoti Gogoi, recorded its worst performance in the Assam Assembly polls. The party, which has been contesting elections since 2021, failed to open its account.
Speaking to reporters, Akhil Gogoi said, “The BJP had a very good plan and, at our end, there was a last-minute, unplanned, haphazard and half-hearted campaign. That’s the main reason. There might be some other technical reasons too; there may be issues with EVMs, but I think the BJP undertook five-six strategies to win this election, and we were unable to come up with a strategy because most of the time went by in holding meetings to finalise the alliance. It kept dragging on and on.”
Gogoi said the BJP had been working on a multi-pronged strategy over the years.
“The BJP’s biggest strategy was delimitation and the Special Revision of voter lists. After delimitation, they reduced the number of Muslim-majority seats to 22. The rest were turned into Hindu-majority seats and, for five years, they kept pushing Hindu-Muslim narratives. They carried out evictions, spoke about Bangladeshis, raised ‘miya miya’ and ‘Pakistan Pakistan’ slogans, and projected evictions as the final solution to save the Assamese people. We did not have any counter-strategy to resist this,” he said.
