Assam’s new cm himanta biswa sarma’s elevation shows how indispensable he has become to bjp

Assam’s new cm himanta biswa sarma’s elevation shows how indispensable he has become to bjp

After days of speculation, Himanta Biswa Sarma has been named as the next CM of Assam, marking a significant change in the state leadership. The decision was taken after both Sarma and incumbent CM Sarbananda Sonowal were called to Delhi for meetings with BJP top brass. After BJP’s stellar performance in Assam polls, where it won an impressive 60 seats and its NDA coalition ended up with 75 out of 126 seats, a debate had gripped the state as to who deserves credit for the victory and who should be at the helm of the state.

A certain section of BJP believed that the party should continue with Sonowal who is perceived to have a clean image and is seen to be more committed to party ideology and Assamese subnationalism. However, Sarma has long signalled his ambitions about the CM’s post. Plus, ever since crossing over to BJP from Congress in 2014, he has been instrumental in increasing BJP’s footprint not just in Assam but throughout the Northeast. As the convenor of the North East Democratic Alliance, Sarma has been BJP’s main troubleshooter and strategist in the region. Even when the party in Assam was hit by anti-CAA protests and Covid crisis last year, it was Sarma who was at the forefront of navigating the troubled waters for BJP.

In fact, Sarma has played a big role in changing the political calculus of Assam by engineering an unspoken electoral alliance between Assamese and Bengali Hindu voters of the state. At the same time, Sarma rightly read the situation in the Bodo areas and got BJP to dump the Bodoland People’s Front and ally with the United People’s Party Liberal back in December, which paid rich dividends in the assembly polls. Finally, Sarma’s assessment that the new regional parties born out of the anti-CAA protests – Assam Jatiya Parishad and Akhil Gogoi’s Raijor Dal – would hurt Congress more than BJP proved to be true.

All of this has seen Sarma achieve a bigger stature than Sonowal in Assam. And with most new MLAs in BJP supporting Sarma, it would have been risky for the party central leadership to overlook him for the CM’s post. However, Sarma takes over at a challenging time for Assam. Covid cases have surged in recent days with as many as 30,190 new cases being reported between May 1 to 7. Sarma, therefore, clearly has his task cut out and must hit the ground running.