BJP wins 50%+ Muslim seat as Ajmal’s stock plummets
Twenty years after Badruddin Ajmal emerged as a key leader in Assam, who broke the Congress’s near-monopoly over the state’s Muslim vote, the Nagaon Lok Sabha bypoll result Friday presented a clear evidence of how far his political stock has fallen — and how the politics of the state’s minorities may itself be changing.
With counting nearing completion, BJP candidate Devasish Sharma has secured 7,05,126 votes or 49.52%, leading Ajmal by 1,51, 474 votes. The AIUDF chief has got 5,54,068 votes or 38.9%, while Congress candidate Sibamoni Bora was a distant third with 1,27,604 votes or 8.96%.
The arithmetic is significant in a constituency whose character was transformed by the 2023 delimitation, with its Muslim population now estimated to exceed 50%. Even the Congress and Ajmal have together polled less votes than Sharma’s.
While population share does not translate directly into turnout or vote percentage, the bypoll outcome indicates that Sharma, a former IAS who served as Nagaon deputy commissioner and is considered popular locally, has drawn a significant section of minority votes too.
It marks another turn in state politics over the last two decades during which the Muslim vote first shifted substantially from the Congress to Ajmal, then returned to the grand old party, and now appears, at least a section of it, poised to engage with the BJP.
Ajmal’s arc
Badruddin Ajmal, 76, a perfume businessman, Islamic scholar and Assam Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind president, floated the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) in 2005, renaming it the AIUDF (All India United Democratic Front) in 2009.
His party’s emergence came amid anxieties among Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam over citizenship and migration, sharpened by the Supreme Court striking down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act in 2005.
The party grew rapidly in the state. Making its debut in the 2006 Assembly elections, Ajmal’s party won 10 of 126 seats with around 9% votes. He himself won two seats. This came after then chief minister Tarun Gogoi had dismissed the new challenger with the question: “Who is Badruddin?”
Five years later, there was no such question. The AIUDF won 18 seats in 2011 with 12.57% votes and emerged as the principal Opposition to the Congress government.
Even in 2016, when the BJP stormed to power for the first time in Assam, the AIUDF secured 13 seats with its vote share rising to 13.05%.
Its Lok Sabha performance was similarly remarkable. Of the state’s 14 seats, the AIUDF won one seat in 2009, garnering 16.1% votes. In 2014, it won three seats with nearly 15% vote share. Ajmal himself won from Dhubri for three successive terms from 2009.
The AIUDF’s appeal rested on a simple pitch: that the Congress had taken Muslim support for granted without adequately protecting the community’s political and citizenship concerns. Ajmal’s religious standing, wealth and network of educational, charitable and medical institutions reinforced his influence.
BJP vis-a-vis AIUDF
Paradoxically, the BJP’s rise initially strengthened rather than weakened the AIUDF.
As politics polarised around migration, citizenship and identity, the BJP consolidated large sections of Hindu and indigenous Assamese voters while the AIUDF positioned itself as a staunch defender of Bengali-origin Muslims.
In the 2021 Assembly polls, the Congress and the AIUDF joined hands in a grand alliance against the incumbent BJP. The AIUDF contested just 20 seats but won 16 — an indication that its concentrated support base remained formidable. But that alliance also marked an inflection point.
The BJP successfully used the Congress-AIUDF tie-up to argue that the Congress was dependent on Ajmal and minority votes. For the Congress, the political cost of the association became increasingly evident, particularly among Assamese Hindu voters.
By 2024, the Congress had broken with the AIUDF. More importantly, Muslim voters appeared to have concluded that if defeating the BJP was the principal objective, backing a smaller Muslim-centric party that could not realistically form a government was less useful than rallying round the Congress.
And the 2024 Lok Sabha poll results framed this in stark terms. In Ajmal’s Dhubri fortress, Congress candidate Rakibul Hussain got 14.71 lakh votes as against the former’s 4.59 lakh, defeating him by over 10.12 lakh votes — one of the largest margins in the history of the Lok Sabha polls. Of the state’s 14 seats, the BJP bagged 11 as against the Congress’s 3 with the AIUDF drawing a blank.
The 2026 Assembly election confirmed that this was not merely a tactical voting meant for a national election as the AIUDF plummeted to just two seats — its worst performance since its formation. The Congress won 19 seats, 18 of them represented by Muslim MLAs.
Delimitation setback
Adding to Ajmal’s woes was Assam’s controversial 2023 delimitation exercise, which redrew the minority-dominated belts in a manner that concentrated Muslim voters into fewer constituencies. Estimates cited by political parties and observers suggested that the Assembly seats where minority voters played a decisive role fell from around 35 to around 23.
The Assembly constituencies in Central and Lower Assam, where the Congress had won 20 seats and AIUDF 11 in 2021, dipped from 49 to 44, with observers arguing that minority areas had been clubbed together into fewer seats.
This was reflected in the Nagaon parliamentary seat too. The constituency was once a BJP stronghold, represented by Rajen Gohain for four consecutive terms from 1999 to 2014 before the Congress’s Pradyut Bordoloi won it for two consecutive terms in 2019 and 2024. The by-election was necessitated as Bordoloi resigned to switch to the BJP and contest, successfully, on its ticket the Assembly election from Dispur earlier this year.
Under delimitation, however, the minority-dominated Dhing, Rupohihat and Samaguri Assembly segments were shifted from the old Kaliabor seat to Nagaon, while Barhampur, Hojai and Lumding – where the BJP had been strong – were clubbed with the new Kaziranga constituency. Nagaon consequently came to be regarded as a minority-dominated seat.
Significance of Nagaon
Until recently, the AIUDF’s decline could largely be explained as Muslim voters abandoning Ajmal for the Congress. The Nagaon bypoll result suggests a potentially newer trend – that sections of the community may even be willing to vote for the BJP when a candidate is seen as popular, accessible or effective.
Its signs were evident during the Assembly poll campaign earlier this year too. In minority-dominated Barkhetri, Muslim residents told The Indian Express that with another BJP government expected to be formed, an alignment with the government could provide better access to administration and schemes. A local resident said: “If we vote for the BJP, maybe the CM will see that we are supporting him. Maybe that will be better for us.”
A BJP candidate had already won the Barkhetri Char zila parishad seat, with over 90% Muslim voters, in the 2025 panchayat election.
So, for Ajmal, the challenge now is no longer merely the Congress reclaiming voters he once wrested from it. The outcome in the constituency he chose for his comeback now suggests that the landscape for a separate Muslim-centric party itself may be shrinking in the state.
