Assam election 2026 is Himanta Biswa Sarma's litmus test. While he has been around in Assam politics, and very visibly so, since the 1990s, this is the election when he is the incumbent and the face. The last two BJP victories were also largely credited to him, but in 2016, he was a neo-convert to the BJP, which picked Sarbanand Sonowal as the Chief Minister after the party's first win, and fought the next election in 2021 under his leadership. Himanta was not on the ballot, so to say. He became the Chief Minister after the victory.
But this time he is. After a full 5-year-term, he is trying to deliver a hat-trick for the BJP, but more than that, he is trying to make a bigger political and personal point: that he is the winner, not just a backroom boy. The stakes are highest for Sarma in 2026 than ever.
The No.2 who always wanted to be No. 1
When former Assam Chief Minister and Congress veteran Hiteshwar Saikia was trying to bring young people to the party fold after the restive 1980s of the Assam Agitation, he found his man in Himanta Biswa Sarma. A young student activist in those days, Sarma, who had built a name for himself in campus politics by then, was associated with the influential All Assam Students Union.
Since joining the Congress in 1991 and quitting it in 2015, he remained the go-getter for both Saikia and later, Tarun Gogoi. Sarma helmed key ministries such as finance, health, PWD, and was the driver of key govt programmes.
But he remained No. 2. The man who was trusted by the top. The man who would get the job done. The trusted lieutenant, not the general. He thrived, he rose, but not to the top.
As Tarun Gogoi's health started to fail after 2011 Assembly elections, Sarma was transparent in his ambition to be the Chief Minister. When it became clear to him that Gogoi would rather push his son, and not him, for the top, he walked away.
Since joining BJP in 2015, Sarma has been the party's face not just in Assam but the entire northeast. He is the party's chief strategist, alliance maker, the opposition breaker. The man trusted by the Centre. But even in the BJP, with all the accolades, and being credited for the party's first win in 2016, he remained the necessary No.2.
That jinx broke in 2021, and the BJP put Sarma in the driver's seat as Sarbanand Sonowal stepped aside. Sarma got what he always believed he deserved and worked tirelessly for it.
Enter Chief Minister Himanta Sarma
This is the first election where Himanta is the face, front and centre, not a backroom planner and manipulator. This is his election. And he has consciously worked for it to be this way. His five-year reign has been all about himself. He is the face of the government. Learning from his own experience and political curve, Sarma has made sure that there is no No. 2 in his regime. He is a one-man show. From addressing press conferences, to inaugurations, to levelling stunning charges against his rivals, it is only the Chief Minister you see. To the extent that he even announces the board exam dates himself. It was Sarma, not a top cop, who addressed the press on the findings of SIT against Gaurav Gogoi over his alleged Pakistan connections.
Sarma has imbibed the rule book of three BJP leaders -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the face of all things in his government; former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who created an image of a benevolent 'mama' (uncle) for himself; and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, whose contested bulldozer governance has made him a darling of hardliners as an unapologetically majoritarian leader.
Sarma plays all three with great success. Welfare push of Modi, personal touch of Shivraj, and the muscular Hindutva of Yogi.
The presence of bulldozers at rallies, where he dances and mingles with the people, is a stark contrast -- presenting Sarma as a leader who cares for his people and would go to any extent to "protect" their interests and their "land".
His hardline stance and rhetoric against Bangladeshi Muslims, deriding commentary on "miyas" as also his singing, dancing, welfare pitch, schemes for women and youth, are all carefully crafted and calibrated political tools to further his image as a tough guy with a softer side. The one who can shake a leg and bulldoze a house in the same breath.
Even while responding to the opposition attacks on alleged corruption or his family wealth, he plays the "son of Assam" card, declaring that all his and his family's wealth will be "willed to people of Assam" and not his children. Again trying to present himself in contrast to the "dynastic" opposition.
The Majority He Really Cares About...
With 60 seats both in 2016 and 2021, the BJP has been running a coalition government. So, this is also Himanta's turn to show that he can deliver the magic number for the BJP. And he is following the BJP tried and tested playbook, hollowing out the Opposition.
Here Sarma is playing a two-pronged game. He is not just getting veteran Congress leaders to switch sides, he is also making it into a Hindu-Muslim issue, framing defections as 'Hindu' leaders quitting the 'Muslim' Congress.
At NDTV's Assam Summit, he declared openly that his mission is to get all the Hindu leaders of the Congress into the BJP. The exception is Gaurav Gogoi, whom he is painting as a Pakistani these days.
Gogoi has categorically denied Sarma's charges.
Sarma is taking PM Modi's "Muslim-Maowadi Congress" attack a step further.
His personal attacks on Congress Dhubri MP Rakibul Hussain and incessant campaign against Gaurav Gogoi over alleged ISI links are part of the strategy to paint Congress as the party of Muslims and, by extension, of Bangladeshis, while projecting the BJP as the party of Hindus and himself as the son of the soil, the protector.
He plays on the demographic anxieties in Assam to his advantage.
Himanta sees this majoritarian politics as the way to the still elusive majority in the Assembly.
Today, he is the most polarising figure in Assam. Will he seal his place as the Numero Uno of Assam politics, or will the aggressive polarising agenda boomerang? Assam will decide on April 9, and we will know on May 4.
