Indigenous presence stronger in 103 Assembly seats: Assam BJP

The Assam unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, on Sunday (November 23, 2025), claimed a stronger “indigenous presence” in 103 of the State’s 126 Assembly constituencies compared to half a decade ago.

The party attributed this trend to the delimitation exercise in 2023, and the “significant progress” made in securing the political and land rights of the State’s indigenous communities under the leadership of Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

“…the recent delimitation exercise reportedly ensured that more than 103 Assembly constituencies would now reflect a stronger indigenous presence, an outcome the party described as a major step toward long-standing political safeguards,” the BJP said in a statement.

The Chief Minister indicated that the Bengali Muslims are in a majority in the remaining 23 constituencies.

“The Congress party will contest 22 seats (in the 2023 Assembly elections). Miyas are the oxygen of Congress, and the party’s politics revolves around them,” he said on the sidelines of an official event, naming five of these seats. ‘Miya’ is a pejorative term used in Assam to refer to Muslims with roots in present-day Bangladesh. The Chief Minister insisted that he would keep pestering the “suspected Miyas” as long as he remained in office.

“The eviction drive will continue while polygamy will be stopped,” he said.

The BJP claimed that 1.5 lakh bighas of land belonging to the satras (Vaishnavite monasteries), forests, and tribal communities have been reclaimed through the eviction drive, which largely affected the Bengali Muslims.

Muslims are believed to be a potent electoral force in 35 of Assam’s 126 Assembly seats. There were 31 Muslim victors in the 2021 State polls, 16 of whom were fielded by Congress and 15 by the All India United Democratic Front led by Maulana Badruddin Ajmal.

There has been a narrative in Assam that Muslims will someday take over most of the constituencies. However, apart from the controversial 1983 election during the peak of the Assam Agitation, the number of Muslim representatives in the Assembly has averaged 25.

The narrative picked up steam after 27 Muslims were elected in 1978, which ‘nationalist’ groups found was alarmingly high compared to the 21 seats they won in 1972. It was one of the triggers of the Assam Agitation that began to associate “illegal immigrants” with “Bangladeshis”, aka Muslims.