Himanta Biswa Sarma: BJP’s North Eastern Pole Star

“He was not conducting the meeting. He was busy with the dog, a small dog. When you have a discussion with a Chief Minister (Tarun Gogoi), you can have a lot of affection for your dog, but you don’t bring your dog to such a meeting. Suddenly the dog started eating biscuits from our table. And he was encouraging the dog. So coming out I told Tarun Gogoi - ‘sir it is goodbye for me’. You can have affection for the dog, but this is a serious discussion, you need to participate in it. You need to show that you are giving attention to people you have called to your home. Then you cannot show a king’s style. That is not the way you conduct yourself.”

It was on Shekhar Gupta’s Walk the Talk show where Himanta Biswa Sarma narrated this story of his possible last interaction with Rahul Gandhi, who he had met along with Tarun Gogoi, then Chief Minister (CM) of Assam, Anjan Datta, then Assam Congress President, and CP Joshi, the Congress General Secretary in charge of the state of Assam. The meeting was supposed to be an icebreaker session between the Assam Congress stalwarts with the state election nearing. Sarma worked in the Gogoi governments of 2006 and 2011 as Cabinet Minister, but had resigned from all posts in mid 2014, amidst mounting differences with the CM. Sarma saw himself as the natural successor to Gogoi, who in turn wanted to catapult his son Gaurav Gogoi as the leader of the state Congress party.

Rahul Gandhi had called Sarma, Gogoi and Datta at his residence purportedly to patch their differences and create a roadmap for the Assam elections. Instead, the conduct and the evident lack of interest of Rahul Gandhi convinced Himanta Biswa Sarma to leave the party.

The loss of Congress was the gain of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Sarma joined the BJP in August 2015 at the residence of BJP President Amit Shah. He was immediately appointed as the convener of the state election management committee for Assam, while Sarbananda Sonowal was announced as the chief ministerial candidate. It was the beginning of the end of Congress in the North Eastern region of India.

Sarma’s aforementioned interview in April 2016 put the spotlight on how Rahul Gandhi, the princeling had systematically alienated the second rung of his three-term state leadership. It also exposed the fiefdom approach of the Congress party. Sarma went on to add - “Somehow Rahul recognises talent but the person’s father should be an old time colleague of Rajiv Gandhi, someone who has worked with Indira Gandhi. But someone who is a fresh person, he will never recognise that talent. He always looked at such persons with some kind of suspicion.” In one swooping sentence, Sarma brought to life what many have identified to be the biggest shortcoming of the Congress scion, and the party he leads today.

In the BJP, Sarma evidently found a party ready to facilitate upward mobility for those willing to work hard and make a difference, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself being an example of rising to the top from being just a party worker. As Shah and Modi went about identifying new faces to lead new state governments, Sarma along with Sarbananda Sonowal were an ideal pair to be the face of the party in Assam.

Both Sarma and Sonowal, contemporaries in Assam’s state politics, started their career with All Assam Students Union. Sarma later joined Congress, while Sonowal went to Asom Gana Parishad, the local political outfit. Their legislative careers started in 2001 and both rose in state politics over the next decade.

While the BJP won seven out of the 14 Assam Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 election, a victory in the 2016 state election was far from guaranteed. Tarun Gogoi, the longest serving CM of Assam, was facing anti-incumbency, but given the rapidly changing demographics of the state and the hold Gogoi had across the state, Congress was not a pushover. Additionally, the All India United Democratic Front was a powerful entity, primarily representing the Muslim community in Assam. Shah needed political might and localisation - less important in the Lok Sabha election with a Modi wave sweeping the country - for the state polls, and he found an ideal pair in Sonowal and Sarma.

Stitching alliances with the local parties, BJP swept the election with 86 out of the 126 seats. Himanta Biswa Sarma led the campaign committee, getting a free hand in selecting local candidates, allocating seats to the allies, and attacking CM Gogoi and his son for promoting parachute, dynastic politics. Sarma avenged his personal insult at the hands of Rahul Gandhi in the best political way possible. Since then, he has not looked back.

Shah created a regional political coordination body in North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), with the intent of creating a BJP stronghold in the eight states in the region. Together these eight states account for 25 Lok Sabha seats, and clearly this is an area BJP wants to win comprehensively in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. In addition to his role as a Cabinet Minister in Assam holding multiple portfolios, Sarma was appointed as the head of the NEDA, with an aim to decimate Congress in the region. Shah and Modi’s ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ agenda met the deep personal grudge and unlimited ambition of Sarma.

Since 2016, BJP has won state elections in Assam and Manipur, concocted a government in Arunachal Pradesh, and got the CMs of Sikkim and Nagaland to be part of the NEDA. Sarma has gone about the business of ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ with a vengeance in the game. He has demonstrated a degree of political ruthlessness, so alien to the Congress under Rahul Gandhi, but very much aligned with how Modi and Shah have gone about rebuilding the BJP after 2014. For the party, Sarma is a full time professional politician with a killer instinct and a sense of personal responsibility for his cause as well as the party’s.

It is also clear that Sarma enjoys a free hand when it comes to expanding NEDA. When BJP fell short of the half way mark in the recent Manipur election, Sarma famously quipped that he can get any legislative assembly member of Congress to switch sides if his party so wished. While it may appear braggadocios, Sarma backed up his rhetoric with results, and BJP proved its majority by cobbling together a rainbow alliance in the state. To the BJP and Amit Shah’s credit, they recognised early on that a minister position will be too little for someone of the stature and caliber of Sarma, and Sarma has paid off his trust through his political hustling.

Over the last year, Sarma has made a strong case for his state. He has spoken of the aspirations the people of Assam have, the constraints which his government faces, and the potential the state has in terms of growth and development. Sarma has passionately put forth the case for preserving Assamese identity and opposed illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Sarma has led the fight against All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), which he has repeatedly called out as a communal outfit.

It could be a matter of time before Himanta Biswa Sarma is made in-charge of the all-important state of West Bengal., particularly with a focus on North Bengal. The state will be crucial for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the party has been ferreting for electoral success in the state. The only hurdle could be the sense of an Assamese running the show in Bengal, but then Himanta is likely to play an organisational role, which is enough to catapult him into the big league in the BJP. There have been several starts followed by long stutters, and a surefooted strategy will require someone like Sarma at the helm of the affairs.

At 48, Sarma is a young star in the BJP. The party has a bevy of leaders less than 60 years of age running states and central ministries, and Sarma is a natural fit. He is too ambitious and too capable to be left in a single region and Modi and Shah seem to acknowledge that fact. If BJP continues its run at the centre in Delhi for a few years, Sarma will be one of the key politicians to watch out for a larger national role in the coming years, perhaps even emerging as the biggest leader the region has to collectively offer. That may even result in handling an important ministry in the centre, especially if BJP continues to do well in Assam.

Himanta Biswa Sarma’s exit is an example of the rot that has set in the Congress party, where merit is overlooked if the top leadership is unhappy or sees a threat to the established patronage-based power networks. At the same time, Sarma is also an example of the big tent approach BJP has taken since 2014 to attack Congress through the country.

In a recent interview to the newspaper Indian Express, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh said - “Himanta Biswa Sarma is an amazing fellow. I have been in-charge of Assam for seven years. He is a political animal par excellence. He is also a great operator and manipulator. We shouldn’t have lost him”.

Rahul Gandhi personally handed over BJP its North Eastern pole star and the BJP isn’t complaining.