Campaigning for the by-election to the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat in Assam ended on Sunday, with the prominent parties in the fray expressing confidence about winning the constituency.
This is the first important election in the state following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) massive win, along with its allies, in the assembly polls held earlier this year, which ensured that they retained power for a third consecutive term.
The Nagaon seat fell vacant in March this year after sitting Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi resigned from the party and joined the BJP. He later won from the Dispur assembly seat on a BJP ticket in the polls held in April.
Polling for the seat will take place on October 6, while counting of votes will take place on October 9.
The ruling BJP started its campaign on a slow note, with chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma stating that the seat was difficult for the party as Muslims comprise a majority of the voters. However, the tone changed as the campaign picked up pace.
“There is a contest, but BJP will win the seat. Nagaon could be a minority-dominated seat, but our candidate will emerge victorious and the victory margin will be around 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh votes,” he told journalists during a campaign rally.
The Congress too is exuding confidence about retaining the seat. “I am 100% confident that Congress will win the seat again. The ruling BJP has committed atrocities on the tribal population and language and religious minorities of the area by taking away their lands or not giving them land ‘pattas’ (records). People know that if they have to overthrow BJP, they will have to vote for Congress,” the party’s state president Gaurav Gogoi said on Saturday.
“Our contest is with both BJP and Congress. I am 110% confident of a win and the people of Nagaon will ensure that the margin of victory will be around 1 million votes,” AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal said on Sunday.
The Candidates
A total of 16 candidates are in the fray for the by-election, with the prominent ones being BJP’s Devasish Sharma, Congress candidate Sibamoni Bora and Badruddin Ajmal of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF).
Sharma is an IAS officer who was the deputy commissioner of Nagaon until the start of last month. Following his voluntary retirement on September 3, he joined the saffron party and was immediately given the ticket.
Sharma was earlier posted as the deputy commissioner of Morigaon, a district adjacent to Nagaon, before being transferred to Nagaon in June last year. There are eight Assembly constituencies in the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat, five of them in Nagaon and the rest in Morigaon.
The Congress, which had won the seat in 2024 and 2019, chose Bora, a former MLA from the Batadrava seat, as its candidate. The 63-year-old, who tasted electoral success in the 2021 Assembly polls, is seeking a comeback of sorts.
A former government officer, Bora also has a political lineage. Her husband, Kiran Bora, had represented the Batadrava seat, and she is the daughter-in-law of Golap Borbora, Assam’s first non-Congress chief minister.
AIUDF chief Ajmal won the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat thrice and represents the Binnakandi seat in the present state Assembly. The 70-year-old perfume baron formed the party in 2005 with an eye on the sizeable vote bank of Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state.
From 2006 to 2021, the party won between 10 and 18 seats in each assembly election. It also won between one and three Lok Sabha seats from 2009 to 2019. But the party’s fortunes have been dipping. It failed to win any seat in the 2024 general election and bagged just two in the Assembly polls this year.
The Constituency
Located in central Assam, Nagaon is one of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Over more than seven decades, it has seen different parties win the seat.
It was a Congress bastion for over three decades beginning in 1952, but the seat changed hands to the Asom Gana Parishad for three terms starting in 1985. It went back to Congress briefly in 1998, but for the next four terms beginning in 1999, the BJP won the seat.
In 2019, the equations changed again and Congress’s Pradyut Bordoloi won the seat. He retained it in 2024, but after he shifted to the BJP earlier this year, the seat fell vacant, resulting in the bye-election.
Following delimitation in 2023, there are eight assembly seats within the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency. Three of them are in Morigaon district and five in Nagaon. In the 2026 assembly polls, four of them were won by BJP candidates and four by opposition candidates — three by Congress and one by Raijor Dal.
Following delimitation, the population profile of the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat has changed, with Muslim voters comprising around 55-58% of the approximately 1.9 million voters. This could have an effect on the outcome of the polls.
