BJP’s Devasish Sharma wins Nagaon Lok Sabha bypoll by over 1.4 lakh votes
By Dalim Phukan
GUWAHATI, OCT. 9: The BJP-led alliance candidate Devasish Sharma on Friday won the Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election by a margin of 1,40,209 votes, defeating AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal in a contest that dealt a major blow to the Congress in Assam.
Sharma secured 7,10,622 votes against Ajmal’s 5,70,413, while Congress candidate Sibamoni Bora finished a distant third with 1,28,743 votes. A total of 15 candidates contested the bypoll.
The result is significant as the constituency has a sizeable religious minority electorate, traditionally considered a strong support base of the Congress and AIUDF. According to the figures cited in the report, the constituency has 19,02,009 voters, including more than 11.48 lakh religious minority voters and around 7.58 lakh Hindu voters.
Sharma’s victory suggests that the BJP-led alliance was able to make inroads into sections of the electorate beyond its traditional support base. However, the voting figures alone do not establish how individual communities voted.
Sharma’s previous tenure as commissioner of Nagaon and Morigaon districts is being seen as a factor behind his broad outreach. He had developed contacts across caste, religious and tribal communities, which reportedly helped him build goodwill during the campaign.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s five-day campaign also played a crucial role in the BJP’s victory. The party combined an aggressive campaign with strategic mobilisation to counter the opposition challenge from the Congress and AIUDF.
The Congress’s third-place finish is a setback for the party in a constituency where minority voters have traditionally played a decisive role. The outcome could also prompt a reassessment of the opposition’s electoral strategy in Assam.
The BJP’s emphatic win is likely to strengthen the ruling alliance’s position in the state, while raising questions about the Congress’s ability to retain its traditional support base ahead of future electoral contests.
Editorial note: I have retained the vote figures supplied in the original copy. Please verify the result and the stated winning margin against the official Election Commission figures before publication. The claim that religious minority voters shifted towards the BJP for “change and development” should be attributed to a source or supported by constituency-level evidence rather than presented as an established fact.
