‘Bangladeshi-origin minorities voted for Congress in Lok Sabha polls’: Himanta Biswa Sarma.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-AGP-UPPL coalition won 11 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam, while the Congress won the remaining three. Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has claimed that the Bangladeshi-origin minority community members ‘overwhelmingly’ voted for the Congress in the just concluded Lok Sabha elections, without considering the ‘developmental work done for them by the BJP-led governments at the Centre and in the state.’ Sarma alleged that the Bangladeshi-origin minority community is the only one in Assam which indulges in communalism, PTI reported. The Bharatiya Janata Party-AGP-UPPL coalition won 11 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam, while the Congress won the remaining three.  “If we analyse the 39 per cent votes of the Congress, it is not spread across the state. Fifty per cent of it is concentrated in 21 assembly segments which are minority dominated. In these minority-dominated segments, BJP got 3 per cent votes,” he claimed while speaking at the felicitation programme of the winning BJP candidates. Continuing further, Sarma said,”This proves that Hindus do not indulge in communalism. If anyone indulges in communalism in Assam, it is only one community, one religion. No other religion does it.” The Assam chief minister said that the minority-dominated areas have voted for Congress and did again, despite not having roads and electricity. He added that the BJP worked for the Assamese people and tribals but the Bangladeshi-origin minorities did not vote for the ruling party. “Except in Karimganj, if we consider the centres with majority Bangladesh-origin people, 99 per cent of votes have gone to Congress. They (minority people) may be residing in houses given by (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi, availing electricity and sanitation facilities provided by Modi, but when they go to vote, they vote for Congress,” PTI quoted Sarma as saying Himanta Biswa Sarma said the Bangladesh-origin community will vote for Congress because they want to control Assam in the next 10 years. The chief minister claimed that members of the community attacked a police station in Lakhimpur, a village in Barpeta and tried to encroach land in Kokrajhar when the BJP government was “inactive” since the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) was in place.