Guwahati: Post delimitation, the number of assembly seats in Guwahati rose from four to five, yet the outcome remained unchanged, with the NDA once again sweeping the city.In the 2021 assembly election, all four Guwahati seats had gone to the NDA, underlining its continued dominance in the urban capital.In this election, attention was centred sharply on Dispur, where the capital seat turned into a high-profile battle between defectors from opposing political camps, and on Jalukbari, from where Himanta Biswa Sarma sought a sixth consecutive term. Pradyut Bordoloi, former minister in ex-CM Tarun Gogoi’s cabinet, who joined the BJP by quitting Congress days before the polls, was pitted in the prestigious Dispur constituency, where the state capital falls, against Congress’ Mira Borthakur Goswami, who joined Congress in 2021 after being expelled from BJP in 2018. Goswami left the BJP and joined the INC in Jan 2021. She was previously a spokesperson for the BJP before being expelled in 2018 for “anti-party activities”.The Nagaon MP, Bordoloi, defeated Goswami by a margin of over 49,000 votes. He accumulated over one lakh votes out of a total over 2.43 votes in the constituency.On the other hand, Himanta won his home constituency – Jalukbari for the sixth consecutive term. He made his debut in 1996 assembly elections but lost to AGP candidate Bhrigu Kumar Phukan. Sarma pocketed the seat by a margin of over 89,000 votes.Guwahati Central remained the most animated theatre of the campaign, with the contest dominated throughout by a charged narrative around Assamese-speaking versus Hindi-speaking identity. BJP pitted its 70-year-old loyal guard, Vijay Kumar Gupta, against whom Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), an ally in the Congress-led opposition alliance, pitted Kunki Chowdhury (27). Both the candidates were first timers. From deepfake attacks to police summons, Kunki was in the epicentre of Assam’s political storm, with CM Sarma dragging her mother’s name in false charges of beef consumption. On Monday, Gupta won the seat with a margin of over 61,000.BJP’s state general secretary Diplu Ranjan Sarmah, who won the Samaguri bypoll in 2024 after it became vacant following the election of MLA Rakibul Hussain to the Lok Sabha that year, contested the New Guwahati constituency against Congress candidate Santanu Bora. Sarmah won by a margin of over 47,000.Dimoria (SC), the new seat created by the delimitation exercise, was given by BJP to its ally AGP, which fielded Tapan Das against Congress’ Kishor Kumar Baruah, who was defeated by a margin of over 65,000 votes. “I will be indebted to the love and blessings of the people of Dimoria,” Das said following his win.
