4 min readGuwahatiMay 6, 2026 07:00 AM IST
As Opposition parties in Assam took stock of their poll debacle on Tuesday, Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi, who himself lost the election from Jorhat, questioned the role of the Election Commission (EC), pointing to the huge margins of the BJP’s victories.
The Congress registered its worst performance in Assam, winning only 19 of the 126 Assembly seats. Of its 19 MLAs, 18 are Muslim leaders who won from seats where minority community voters make up a bulk of voters, reflecting the party’s inability to appeal to the rest of the electorate. The electoral loss suffered by Gogoi, who had made his state poll debut, was the biggest individual defeat among the party’s candidates, along with the defeat of Debabrata Saikia, who was the Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Assembly.
While stating that the party accepts the public verdict and that he accepts moral responsibility for the defeat, Gogoi on Tuesday targeted the EC. “Our leader Rahul Gandhi has been raising questions about this election. We have seen the behaviour and character of the Election Commission. We have been saying this as various parties on the floor of the House in Delhi. We even tried to bring a no-confidence motion against the Chief Election Commissioner,” he said.
“The people cannot believe the results of this election. The margin of votes is such that people cannot trust the outcome. We also cannot believe the results, and the public shares this disbelief. In many constituencies, people thought a candidate would win by a small margin, but the difference has been huge. People, journalists, and intellectuals were discussing that many constituencies would see a 50-50 fight. We expected neck-to-neck fights. People thought the results in many seats would be within 5,000 to 10,000 votes, but the gap is vast. We will have to review the results of several seats in the coming days,” he said, adding that the party would hold a special meeting on May 9 to review this.
With the Congress left without its most prominent faces in the Assembly and finding itself pushed into the image that is not able to represent the interests of the state’s broader population, something it had actively tried to avoid, Gogoi said the party would focus on playing the role of a “strong Opposition”.
“Whenever this government tries to intimidate or put people in danger, we will stand with the common citizens. That is our promise. We will keep an eye on the government’s negligence, mistakes, and corruption. Even if the Congress party has fewer seats, we have not given up. I tell the entire Congress leadership of Assam and the people of Assam that we haven’t gained seats as expected, but we have not lost heart mentally,” he said.
The Raijor Dal’s Akhil Gogoi, who is one of only two Opposition MLAs elected from Upper and North Assam said the result was “hard to believe”. Among the factors he attributed to the NDA crossing the 100 mark in the state are delimitation, the Special Revision of voter lists that took place before the election, the outgoing BJP government’s cash transfer schemes, and Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma “holding two to three public meetings in every constituency himself”.
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He also held the fact that the Opposition alliance of his party with the Congress and other regional parties such as the Assam Jatiya Parishad and the All Party Hill Leaders Conference was finalised less than three weeks before voting.
