Congress Chief Gaurav Gogoi trails in his Jorhat debut as the party faces a third consecutive loss in the high-stakes Assam Assembly polls. (File)
While the Congress is headed to its third consecutive loss in the high-stakes Assam polls, the outcome has especially dealt a body blow to the party’s face and its state unit chief Gaurav Gogoi.
In his Assembly poll debut from the Jorhat constituency, Gogoi – the 43-year-old three-time MP and the Congress’s Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha – is himself trailing behind his BJP rival and incumbent MLA Hitendra Nath Goswami.
This is part of an overall grim scenario for the Congress, which finds itself in the lead in only one – Nowboicha – of the 43 seats of Upper and North Assam, where various ethnic Assamese communities are concentrated.
Of Assam’s 126 seats, the Congress currently has leads in only 24 seats, which are mostly scattered across Central and Lower Assam, and parts of the Barak Valley in South Assam.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Gogoi’s win from the Jorhat parliamentary seat after a fierce fight against the BJP candidate was one of the biggest individual wins for the Congress, which has been suffering setbacks in Assam since 2016.
This time, Gogoi did not only contest from the Jorhat seat, but also, as the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president, led the grand old party as well as its six-party alliance. He had also been projected by the Opposition camp as its chief ministerial candidate.
In his campaign, Gogoi leaned on the legacy of his late father, Assam’s longest serving CM Tarun Gogoi. While the Congress had contested without a clear face in 2021 after Tarun Gogoi’s demise in 2020, the party put up Gaurav Gogoi as a challenger to BJP leader and CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has long held Gaurav as a key rival.
The Jorhat seat was not an easy contest for Gaurav Gogoi. His opponent Hitendra Nath Goswami has been well-entrenched in the constituency. Belonging to a prominent local family, Goswami, despite his multiple terms as an MLA from the seat, has continued to enjoy widespread goodwill among his voters. He has contested in every state election from Jorhat since 1991, having been the MLA from 1991 to 2006 as a part of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) before losing the polls in 2006 and 2011. He switched to the BJP in 2014 and has won the seat on the party’s ticket since 2016.
With Gaurav Gogoi criss-crossing the state to campaign for the Congress candidates across constituencies, the bulk of his own canvassing in Jorhat was carried out by local party workers, including some ticket aspirants from the seat.
Along with his own contest, this election was a crucial test of Gogoi’s leadership against the formidable Sarma-led BJP. The BJP’s imminent hattrick and its biggest-ever win in the state is set to be a considerable setback not just for the Congress, but also for him.
